Entre l'amour et la mort
by Savior 8801
Summary: A run gone wrong sets events into motion, events that lead to a bittersweet realisation... and the birth of Rachel's worst nightmare. Rachel/Ivy.
1. Prologue

Prologue

The spell that hit me came out of nowhere and slapped me silly. One second, up was up and down was down, the next, they weren't. It felt like someone had put my brain in a blender and set it to maximum speed. The concrete of the alley rushed to meet my face with a nasty slap that left me even more stunned. The clatter of my splat gun hitting the ground barely registered against the haze of whatever mind-scrambling spell I had been hit with.

_Stupid witch… Al would laugh his ass off if he saw you._ Then again, the demon might just be appalled that his pupil couldn't pull off the simplest counterspells. He made it look so easy in training, like it was second nature to him, but I still fumbled half the time, when I even remembered to use them at all. Even after months of lessons, I still pretty much fought and used my magic the same way I always had; as a last resort.

I muttered the words of Latin of a dispelling spell, the confusion lessening but still too great for me to do more than keep the contents of my stomach down. My vision was blurry when I looked up, but there was no mistaking the enormous shape of the revolver clutched in the man's hand.

They say that the longer you stare down the barrel of a gun, the more important it becomes, the more place it takes in your consciousness. What kind of life do I lead when this becomes a cold, hard fact for me? Like now; I'm no firearms expert, but the huge, silvery monster in the man's fist just couldn't be that big, or it would blow a hole the size of a watermelon in my chest, right? While in reality, it would be a grapefruit-sized hole at worst, right? Right?

Now that I think about it, that's not a comforting thought…

_God, why do you always babble when you're about to die?_ Hmm, not a comforting thought either. I mean, how bad is it that I know I always babble when I'm about to die?

_Maybe you should shut up and do something about it._ Yeah, that sounded good, except that I knew I was stuck in a single second, stretched beyond belief because of adrenaline and the calm realization that this is it. I'm dead. Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.

There's a blur. That's all I can see, just a dark blur, a tall shadow coming between me and that bowling ball sized gun. Then there's a thunderclap, an impossibly loud booming sound that echoes through me. No pain, though I don't understand why. I was so sure that when the sound would come, I'd be dead, but I'm not.

The dark blur, however, has materialized into a tall, dark haired woman, hunched in pain before the man with the gun, her beautiful features scrunched up in agony. _Ivy, _I thought, the realization slicing through the spell induced confusion like a knife through my flesh. Again, my best friend had thrown herself in the face of death for me.

The man, however, was unmoved by the sacrifice he just witnessed. He scoffed as he levelled his gun back at Ivy's crouched form, muttering what sounded like "stupid bitch" before landing the sole of his booth in the vampire's face. Ivy grunted in pain, blood seeping from her nose as she landed on her side and curled upon herself. I, forever the dumbass, did nothing at all, too shocked by the sight of my best friend clutching her middle to take the opportunity I was given to lunge for my gun, or cast a spell, or do anything that might get us out of this mess. Horror, coupled with the spell that messed with my mind, had overruled training, had made me too slow to react, and as the man with the gun strolled over Ivy, after kicking her in the ribs and wrenching an honest to God sob from her, I knew that Ivy had thrown her life away in vain this time.

"And here I thought I'd have to content myself with a scrawny little witch. Well, no need for you, now. I'll take the pretty vamp, instead. Of course, I'll have to beat her good before, break a few limbs, but that's fun too… Nighty night, witch." The rough features of the human were alight with sheer anticipation, his eyes glinting with a malignant desire that sickened me.

The barrel of the gun was again centered between my eyes. I didn't stare at it this time; instead, my gaze searched for Ivy's, hoping I could look into her eyes and apologize for the horrible death she would suffer because of me. Mine would be quick and painless, but she would be tortured and raped because she tried to save me.

_This is all just a bit of history repeating …_ I thought bitterly. Life had just been so unfair to her. It seemed she wouldn't even get the mercy of a graceful death.

But Ivy wasn't lying on the cold concrete. In fact, I couldn't see her anywhere, but since my vision still went from focused to blurry, that didn't mean much. I silently apologized to her, and closed my eyes, waiting for the final moment of my existence. I heard the distinct sound of the hammer being pulled back, accompanied by a very amused chuckle. The sound made me sick.

"You should have finished me off, asshole." Ivy's usually melodious voice sounded incredibly harsh and rough, carrying more anger than I'd ever heard her express. My eyes flew open just in time to see her dark, leather-clad form looming behind her would-be rapist. Her hands were joined over her head, and in one impossibly powerful move, she delivered a hammer blow to his head. His neck gave way with a snap, bent at an awkward angle, and he collapsed in a messed bundle of limbs. The gun slid from his grasp and with a bang that reverberated through me, it went off, the bullet miraculously only grazing my left arm. The pain was drowned out by the sheer, overwhelming relief that flowed through me. Ivy, though, didn't look so good.

"Sorry… that was sloppy." She muttered, her black eyes unfocused and her usually uptight posture wobbly and unsure. I didn't even have time to move before she collapsed.

"Ivy!" I cried out as I scrambled to get close to her. She was on all four, blood flowing freely from her chest and her mouth as she vomited, bringing to my mind more memories I'd rather have forgotten. I knew it wasn't hers, that it was just the blood she had shared with some unknown partner, but it was still a terrifying sight.

It didn't last long. She collapsed on her side, then lay on her back, her face covered in blood, from her nose, her mouth… her top was soaked through with it under her short leather jacket, and it mated her black hair; to say she was a mess would be the understatement of the century.

My fingers scrambled for the cell phone on her belt, my own lying forgotten in my desk back at the church. In a haze, I dialled 911. I somehow managed to call an ambulance, although I don't know how; all I could see were Ivy's perfect black orbs staring back at me, her pupils completely dilated not from hunger or instinct but mind-numbing fear and pain. Her chest heaved rapidly, her breathing was fast and shallow… My hands felt for the bullet wound in her side and pressed on it, the sensation of her warm blood flooding my fingers bringing tears to my eyes. She was hurt badly; already she had trouble keeping her eyelids opened and her eyes focused.

"Stay awake, Ivy. Come on, stay awake. You can do it, don't give up. Just stay with me." I said in a shaky voice as I brought one bloodstained hand to her cheek and tapped it gently.

"You're bleeding…" She mumbled weakly. It was true; blood had soaked the sleeve of my torn sweater just above the elbow. Now that she mentioned it, it hurt a fair bit, but it was a scratch next to her injuries. If I hadn't been scared out of my mind, I would've rolled my eyes; typical Ivy, worrying about me when she was clearly the one in the most trouble. I tried, and failed, to swallow my tears. What in hell had I ever done to deserve a friend like her?

"It's not bad, thanks to you. And you know what? Now, you've got to stay awake so I can kiss you. Got to… got to give you a proper thanks." My voice was a half sob, but it did bring a smile to her lips; a terrifyingly small and weak smile, a resigned smile, but still a smile. My lips quirked in response, though the tears that still streamed freely down my cheeks probably ruined the effect.

"You're bullshitting me." Her head fell with the last of her words. She was suddenly completely still and limp. A sigh escaped her, then nothing; her breathing had stilled with the rest of her body.

"Ivy… Ivy! IVY!"


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Kim Harrison's characters.

Chapter one

I hate hospitals. I have hated them ever since, in death, my father's hand went limp in mine, years ago. The revelation that he hadn't been the one to sire me didn't make that memory any less painful; I still couldn't think of Takata… sorry, _Donald_, as my father, not when he had abandoned my mother for so long. The fact that she was doing better now that he was back in her life than she had in years didn't make up for the fact that it was his lack of involvement that sent her deeper to begin with.

Yeah, I know, my mind is wandering, but years old grief over my father and anger at my would-be father felt better than the anguish and guilt I felt over Ivy.

It's a bit ironic that in the end, I did end up locking lips with her, although it was for CPR and not to thank her for saving my life. It was what kept her alive after she lost consciousness, or at least that's what the paramedics said. She had resumed breathing on her own, but not regained consciousness, during the trip to the hospital, and it was considered a small miracle that she even survived this long. Ivy had been rushed into surgery the instant she came in, and there was still no news as to whether or not she'd make it. She lost a lot of blood, and if it hadn't been for her vampiric abilities, she would be dead already.

The thought brought a sigh to me; even if Ivy hated her vampire nature, she never hesitated to use it to help me, or anyone else who needed her help. She hated it, even if most of the time it was what kept her and those she loved alive and going. That and her strength of character; it's almost impossible to put it in perspective, there's just no one stronger of will that I know. I just hoped she'd get the chance to learn to accept what she is.

A deep yawn escaped me as I shifted in the uncomfortable plastic chair of the waiting room. Ivy had been in surgery for the past eight hours now, and it was around ten a.m., or so the clock said. It felt more like a lifetime… I felt tired, miserable and lonely, despite the fact that an uptight F.I.B. officer stood guard next to me. I hadn't been officially put under arrest for anything, but it was still standard procedure to be under watch when you come in with someone who suffered a gunshot wound. The guy didn't look like he wanted to babysit me, either that or he had a problem with Inderlander, or maybe with "independents" like me, those who operated outside the two main bodies of law enforcement, the Federal Inderland Bureau and the Inderland Security Service, I.S. for short. Whatever. It was an F.I.B. contract that landed me into this mess in the first place.

For god knows how many times I wished Jenks was here. I badly needed him and his constant babbling, his near miraculous ability to cheer me up and comfort me right now. I knew deep down that this run would have been a cakewalk with him by my side, but it was still far too cold outside for him to accompany me. So Ivy had agreed to help me instead. The rest is history…

"Rache!" came a tiny voice from the direction of the main entrance. I suddenly wondered if I had fallen asleep and into a dream, but no, I hadn't. Sure enough, as if my thoughts had summoned him, I spotted Jenks' tiny form darting through the sterile white hallway, trailing dark sparkles of fear and concern behind him.

"Rache! Tink's contractual hell, you scared me! Are you okay? Are you hurt? Purple fairy crap, you are! And Ivy… I swear, if that lunker's not dead, I'll make him wish he was, mark my word! Holy cow, I was worried…" He was wearing his usual working clothes, a black silk outfit and a red bandana wrapped around his forehead, keeping his blond hair out of his eyes. A one and a half inch long sword hung at his hip, showing more clearly than words how seriously pissed he was to see his friends in a hospital. Many would underestimate the deadliness of such a small thing, and the odds are this would be their last mistake. I'd rather go up against Ivy than him; at least I'd get the impression of going down fighting…

"Jenks? How did you… it's freaking freezing out, how can you be here?" I said, interrupting his tirade about the (probably) anatomically impossible fate he had in store for the man whose neck Ivy had snapped. _She might have done him a favour after all,_ I thought, my mood lifting with Jenks' presence; things never went the worst way with him around.

"Oh, that… I had a lift." He answered simply just as Glenn's tall form walked in from the same hallway Jenks had come from. The black man was in full F.I.B. mode, complete with suit and dress shoes, all in black. His gun made a small bump under his jacket and the F.I.B. badge hooked on his belt glittered dully under the neon light. He looked almost as tired as I felt. He had probably been up for a full work day now.

"You can go. She's been cleared." Glenn said, gesturing the uniform away from me, his posture carrying his usual authority. The F.I.B. officer left without a word, his absence barely registering; Jenks more than filled his place as he continued to list all the things he would do once he got his hands on whoever did this to me and Ivy.

"You didn't tell him what happened?" I asked Glenn, wincing at some of Jenks' more creative suggestions. In other circumstances, I might have laughed, but not with Ivy fighting for her life just a few meters away.

"Tell me what?" Jenks stopped mid-sentence, coming to hover a few inches from my eyes. "What?! What didn't he tell me?"

"He's dead, Jenks. Ivy killed him. She snapped his neck."

He dropped several feet, his disappointment surprising. "Lucky lunker…" he muttered under his breath. "So how is she? Any news? Please tell me she's alright."

The temporary relief I'd felt at seeing Jenks drained from me instantly. "I don't know, Jenks. She's still in there. They haven't told me anything yet, but she was in pretty bad shape when she came in."

"What about you?" Glenn asked, genuine concern in his voice "Are you okay?"

"Just a scratch." I said, lifting my left arm to show the bandaged wound on my naked bicep; my sweater had been ruined by my blood and Ivy's, so I stood in a simple tank top and leather pants. The bandage was soaked with blood, which surprised me; in all my shock, I hadn't noticed it.

"You were shot, Rachel. This needs to be stitched." Glenn replied reproachfully after grabbing my arm and examining it more closely.

And so I found myself sitting on an exam table, three prescription pain amulets around my neck dulling the sting of a needle and the pull of thread in my flesh. Glenn stood by me, focusing my attention away from the stitching and getting my version of what happened at the same time.

"So, what happened? I sent you after a brimstone dealer, a relatively harmless one at that. You shouldn't have run into this kind of trouble. Hell, you shouldn't have had any trouble at all with Tamwood at your back."

"I don't know. The dealer himself was no trouble at all, just one splat ball and he was down for the count. The buyer… I was about to tag him, but I got hit with a confusion spell. Guess somebody had backup in case the deal went south."

"Okay, then what? It's not you who's in surgery."

"Ivy had my back. I think she took out the safety net, but the buyer pulled out a gun before I could shake off the spell. Ivy… she threw herself in front of the gun just as he fired." My voice caught has I remembered those terrifying moments, Ivy's curled up body, blood spurting from her wounds; then the images that ran though my head as he announced his intention to rape her… A shiver of dread coursed through me. With one last tug, the stitching was done, and I silently pleaded to the man who did it to be left alone. It would be hard enough to relive these moments with only people I trusted present.

"He said he'd rape her. He didn't just kill her, and that was his mistake. She got up and hit him from behind, hard." Recalling that one of us had killed someone, I looked up at Jenks, who was still flitting around, shedding angry red sparkles and spitting a never-ending stream of curses, then at Glenn. "What took you two so long to get here?" I asked, my eyes suddenly narrowing in suspicion. He'd had enough time to get a warrant for Ivy's arrest. "Is this an interrogation? Is somebody under arrest, Glenn?" I asked in a venomous tone; it wouldn't be like him to betray me like that. Hell, it wasn't like me to suspect him of doing anything like that, but I was pushing 24 hours without sleep, and the events of last night left me more than a little paranoid.

Glenn, however, simply shook his head, his face still grim. There was a surprising amount of worry and weariness in his eyes. Something was clearly bothering him. I noticed his stud earrings were gone, which probably meant girlfriend troubles, since she had been the one to give them to him. It had been a while since we talked in person, so I didn't know if it was recent or not.

"Is Ivy in trouble, then?" I added more tamely, gesturing to Jenks to stand down. Pure black dust sifted from him now, and he looked like he wanted to try some of his earlier suggestions on Glenn now.

"Let me handle this, Jenks." I rose to get in Glenn's face, but before I could move his arm shot to my shoulder to push me back. He gestured for me to calm down.

"She was. That's what took me so long. The I.S. pressed charges for unlawful death against her. It took me that long to plunge into bureaucratic hell and make sure the worst they could do was pull her runner license." Glenn shot me a tired look. "I'm on your side, Rachel, calm down."

I averted my gaze, feeling like crap, and Jenks' pixy dust shifted to an embarrassed red. Glenn had just spent several hours getting someone he didn't even like out of trouble, and here we were, doubting him like we'd met yesterday.

"Sorry… It's been one hell of a night." I looked up at him. "Thanks for clearing that up, Glenn. I know you and Ivy aren't on the best of terms, but… this means a lot to me."

He looked away, looking a little embarrassed. What do you know; Mr Big Bad F.I.B. detective had a soft side beneath his tough law enforcement façade. He muttered a vague "don't worry about it", then started pacing, his hand rising to scratch a spot on his shoulder. I glanced pointedly at Jenks, but the pixy's look was one of denial, not of apology. So he hadn't pixed him… It was probably nothing.

"I don't know who that guy was, but he sure didn't sound like a pro." Glenn mused, and I silently nodded, remembering the sickening glint of amusement and anticipation in his eyes when he talked about raping Ivy. A professional would've just shot the both of us and left as fast as he could.

"More like a psychopath." I muttered under my breath.

"I can do some digging if you want. Keep you informed…"

I shook my head. "No thanks, Glenn. I really just want to forget the whole ordeal. Just warn me if there's something you think I should know."

There was a soft knock at the door, and a woman wearing a lab coat walked in the small exam room. She was short and looked about forty, with short brown hair and green flecked grey eyes. Her round face was slightly lined, and dark bags hung under her eyes. There was a whiff of blood about her. I'd guess she was a were, judging by the scent coming off her and the discreet grace of her movement.

"Ms Morgan?"

It was all I could do not to jump at her.

"Is she alright?" I asked, dread and anticipation coursing freely through me.

"Ms Tamwood is out of surgery. She is in post-op right now, and her condition is stable. We don't fear for her life anymore."

Relief flooded through me. _Thank you, God._ "Can I see her?"

"Of course, but I have to warn you that she still hasn't regained consciousness. If you would just follow me?"

I stepped in behind her, mildly surprised that we were headed back to the waiting room. She led me through it to a separate room, in which waited a lone black haired woman.

"Ms Randal?"

The woman raised her head, and I jumped in surprise. Before me was a younger, shorter version of Ivy, complete with (red and blotchy) almond shaped eyes and (tear damp) oval face. Her hair was longer, brushing silkily on her shoulder in a smooth ebon wave. I barely had time to gasp before she hung at my neck, taking me in a crushing hug. Her body shook wildly with intense sobs, but I was suddenly in no state of mind to comfort her; in her rush, her arm had brushed against my demon scar and awoke it, causing a heady rush of desire and pleasure to flood through me.

"Let go!" I panted, barely able to stay upright; the rush wasn't as intense as it had been the few times Ivy had played with my scar, but usually she supported my weight, not the other way around. "Erica, let go, please!" I was horrified by the passion-filled moaning sound of my voice. God, I longed for this… NO! I gently pushed the psyched young vamp away, knowing that struggling against her grip would only trigger her instincts.

"Erica, it's okay…" I whispered as she pulled her arms from my neck to wrap them around my middle, her face coming to bury in my chest. Her sobbing was slowly fading, along with the pulses of pleasure coming from my neck, as I stroked her hair and soothed her. God, I'd been a fool. I should have known she would be here at least, if not her entire family. "It's okay. Ivy's tough, she pulled through"

"You… you're okay. She… Ivy…shit… So scared." She mumbled softly, her voice hiccupping. She looked every bit the scared 17 year-old that she was and nothing at all like the predator she could, and would, become. She'd changed since the last time I saw her; puberty had finished filling her out, turning a slightly awkward teenager into a beautiful young woman. Her new fashion sense was perhaps what threw me the most; gone was the gothic get-up, the heavy makeup, most of the piercings, the many necklaces and the spiky hair. To put it simply, she dressed like Ivy did, making them look even more alike, although Erica didn't have her sister's quiet intensity and cool, aloof attitude. She looked like Ivy should have looked at 17, unsullied by Piscary's touch, her emotions free and untainted.

"Can we see her?" Erica asked in a slightly shaky voice, her brown eyes showing not a hint of black. _Ivy would be poised to bite me if she had been here_, I thought, remembering how hard it was for her to maintain her control when the rush from my scar came over me. It put what she had been through in perspective to have another vamp dismiss it so casually. Then again, maybe Erica had feed recently, or maybe worry overruled everything else. When it came to vampire instincts, there were no hard and fast rules, only a set of wide variables.

"Yeah, sure. Let's go."

Erica and I stepped out of what I figured out to be a vamp-specific waiting room and fell in with the doctor, but as we walked through the hospital's corridors unto Ivy's room, a feeling of guilt and hypocrisy surged through me. How could I just comfort Ivy's sister, when I'd been the very reason she was hurt in the first place?

That didn't last long, though. Actually seeing Ivy, lying unconscious in bed, made me feel much worse...


	3. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own much of anything, let alone Kim Harrison's characters

Chapter 2

The vamp ICU was located deep underground, and the complete lack of natural light, coupled with silence so thick you could cut it with a knife, gave it the feel of a tomb. My steps echoed with impossible loudness in the oppressing atmosphere. Next to me, Erica moved with typical vampire grace and silence, looking ethereal and making me feel like a klutz. Jenks was uncharacteristically silent, circling over us and sifting clear dust now that he knew Ivy was out of the woods. Glenn was gone, having left us to answer an emergency call from the F.I.B.

The silence that ruled supreme in the hallway was broken by the whooshing sound of an oxygen tank and the slow beeping of a heart monitor when we entered the room. Ivy herself was lying deathly still in bed, a tube in her nose feeding her oxygen while an I.V. was stuck in her arm, transfusing blood from a plastic bag hanging next to her. Her usually snow-white, almost sparkling complexion now looked ghastly from blood loss. Her nose had been straightened up but still looked red and sore. I had to bite back the tears that threatened to overflow again.

"Tink's little red shoe, it's freezing in here!" Jenks rumbled as he landed on my shoulder, using the warmth from my body to counteract the chill that filled the room. His presence was soothing, the warm dust from his wings satving off the sterile, deathly-feeling air.

"Yes, I apologize for that." The were doctor said from the doorway. "I imagine this room must feel pretty cold to a pixy, but it is much more comfortable for a recovering vampire to be exposed to a cooler temperature, especially one who clinically died."

"Clinically died? But she's still alive, right?" My blood felt like ice water in my veins. In my all-consuming fear of losing Ivy, I'd forgotten her possible undead status. _Please, God, she can't be undead… I couldn't handle it if she was._ The thought of Ivy cold and uncaring was too much to bear.

"Yes, Ms Morgan, your friend is still very much alive." A part of me warmed at her use of the word "friend". Most people assumed, because of the vamp scars on my neck, that I was Ivy's shadow. "The vampire virus in her did briefly become active, but not nearly long enough for her to make a full transition. Ms Tamwood will probably have a high fever for a few days, but we expect her to recover fully. We have both of you to thank for this." She gestured to me and Erica. "Without the blood you donated, Ms Randal, it would have been impossible to save your sister. It's almost impossible to get compatible blood for a living vampire, due to strain-specific mutations. Siblings are usually the only way to go." She shifted her gaze from Erica to me, and she added "And of course, you kept her alive long enough for us to help her. She was lucky to have the both of you."

Her smile was warm as she excused herself and left, a voice from the hallway summoning her away. Her words stayed with me, though I didn't believe them; I may have saved Ivy, but I'd been the one to put her in danger in the first place. One kind of cancelled the other out…

Erica stepped away from me and settled herself in an armchair sitting in a corner. She sighed deeply as she buried her face in her hands, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes. Her voice was horribly dull when she spoke.

"She was hurt trying to save you, wasn't she?" Erica's words held no heat, her eyes no anger, only a frightening emotional void that looked awfully wrong on the usually petulant vampire.

I could only nod because of the ball in my throat. What are you supposed to say to someone whose sister took a bullet for you? I walked up to her and sat on the armrest, my hand rising to rub her back comfortingly.

"God, why does she have to be so crazy about you?" Again, I couldn't answer her. I didn't know myself why Ivy only had eyes for me. Maybe because we completed each other so well, or maybe it had something to do with the merging of our auras, something that even Ceri, the smartest person I knew, had failed to explain. Whenever I thought about it, one conclusion came to mind, one tiny word that made me impossibly uncomfortable and more than a little scared; _soulmates. _

I couldn't help but wonder if I was Ivy Tamwood's soulmate. If Ivy's sometimes unnatural attraction for me, and my own terrible heartache at the thought of leaving her, or her leaving me, stemmed from some ridiculous notion of us being destined to be together.

"I'm sorry, Erica. It should be me in that bed. I didn't want any of this to happen." My words mirrored those I'd said to Skimmer, Ivy's ex-girlfriend, several months ago. But this time, when I looked back at Erica's eyes, there were none of those angry feelings, none of that possessive rage that tainted Skimmer's otherwise deep feelings for Ivy; there was only a kind of resigned compassion.

"I'm not mad you're okay and she's not. It just kills that she could just throw her life away in an instant for you. She's going to be okay this time, but one of these days, she won't. I just feel so completely sure that eventually she'll die for you." The young vamp buried her face in her hands again, but not before I noticed the silent tears that ran from her brown eyes. My arm went around her slim shoulders and I pulled her closer.

"Did she ever tell you about mom's death?" Erica asked in a soft voice, her eyes lingering back on Ivy's immobile form but unfocused, as if she was staring straight into their shared past.

"I know it hurt her a lot when she died, but I never really pressed the issue…" …because the only time I had was during our first night under the same roof, and it had almost resulted in her ripping out my throat. Don't ask why; even I don't understand that rule.

"I didn't think she did. Ivy never talks about it. Even though it's been ten years, I don't think she's ever dealt with it. You just have no idea how close they were. Mom had Ivy when she was sixteen, and while she was alive, they were more like sisters than mother and daughter. I don't think they kept anything from each other."

"Yeah, my mom had me pretty young too. I couldn't really talk to her for a while, though." My sweet-as-sugar, complete nutjob of a mother, who was finally starting to live again after all these years. "We're like sisters as well… nowadays. It used to be that I was more of a caretaker."

Erica nodded in acknowledgement. "Ivy wasn't home when mom died. She was sent away to finish high school. That's where she met Skimmer." A soft smile spread Erica's lips; it was clear she appreciated the pretty blond vamp. I know I didn't; it's not that I hated her, although she hated me, it's just that… well…I guess… screw that, I did hate her.

"Skimmer was there for Ivy during those two years, and I think she was good for her. But Ivy… She left straight and confused and came back… confused and alone." Erica continued, her eyes still on her sister. "What felt natural and right when Skimmer was around was scary and confusing when she came back. Ivy went into a pretty deep denial… If mom had been alive, I don't think it would have been that big of a deal; she always listened." She scoffed lightly. "I was only six when she passed away, but I still remember how calm and strong she was. Ivy could've told her she was growing a second head and mom would still have taken it calmly and found a way for them to deal with it. But…" She couldn't seem to finish her sentence.

"But a dead vamp for a mom just isn't the same?" I completed quietly.

Erica shook her head, her shoulder-length hair creating a shimmering curtain in front of her face. "Between leaving Skimmer back in California, mom being dead, dad being busy keeping mom going and Kisten taking up her duty as Piscary's scion, she just didn't have anyone to confide in anymore. So she went to Piscary instead. And he was so happy to mess with her new confusion." She paused. Her hands balled into tight fists and her jaw clenched. "And I didn't do anything; I just stood by and watched her sink deeper." Her voice through her gritted teeth was full of bitter self-recrimination. It was a side of her I never expected was there.

"Hey, hey, hun, she doesn't blame you for that." I said gently, tightening my grip on her shoulders only to have her shrug me off. Her eyes were black in anger now, and her voice rose in volume as repressed fury and guilt uncoiled in her heart.

"The only reason Piscary never showed any interest in me was because he was too busy FUCKING HER OVER! She should blame me. She was eighteen, and god, did I ever WORSHIP her, yet SHE was the one crying herself to sleep every night. I just… I should have done something, anything." By the time the last of her words caught in her throat and her sobbing returned in full force, I was totally at a loss for words, partly because Ivy had also come between me and Piscary as well. She had bled and suffered for me so often, all because of feelings I was afraid to try and return, and worse, that I felt I wasn't remotely worthy of. She deserved someone who could love her and accept all that she was, the bad, which for the most part existed only in her mind, and the good.

The dry sound of pixy wings fluttering next to my ear snapped my attention away from the crying vampire.

"No, Erica, you were six, your mom had just died, your dad couldn't be there for you and that big sister, whom nobody could ever believe you don't love more than anyone, suffered so much more than a six year old could understand. You can't blame yourself for that." Jenks' voice was gentleness given sound, the brash, sometimes pain-in-the-ass backup giving way to the loving father. "If it means someone she loves won't have to suffer, there's just no cost Ivy isn't willing to pay. It's her reason to be, and you're doing her a disservice by agonizing over the price she paid so you would never have to."

His words, I felt, were not said only for Erica's benefit.

"I'm not saying you should be jumping with joy, but don't torment yourself with guilt. Enjoy her gift, that's the highest tribute you can offer to her sacrifices."

Erica was quiet for a long moment, pondering Jenks' words, her eyes closed and her breathing hiccupping less and less as the truth of Jenks' words broke through her guilt. Her slim body soon no longer shook with sobs, and I tentatively wrapped my arm around her shoulders, finding that she accepted the comfort I offered her this time. She leaned into me, her head coming to rest against my shoulder, the warm breath she blew out in a long sigh making a warm spot on my chest. The tension seemed to blow out of her with her breath, and she slumped completely against me.

"I don't want to lose her… It was hell when mom died. I don't want her to be like that." Erica's voice started to slur. Emotional exhaustion and sleep deprivation were rapidly taking their toll and the young vampire. I kissed the top of her head, taking in the scent of vampiric incense of her silky black hair. _She smells almost as good as Ivy…_

"I don't either, sweety. It's funny; when Kisten died, I thought for a long time that I wouldn't be able to live again. Now it's the same with Ivy. I just don't know what I'd do without her." Where she used to scare me or drive me insane she was now a calm center in the chaos that was my life. Funny how things turn out…

"Don't let her die then… I'm begging you…" Then she was silent, what I hoped was peaceful, dreamless sleep taking her over. I held her for a few moments more, then gentled her backwards so her head rested against the armchair. She looked calm, almost peaceful now, and again I was struck by the ressemblance with her big sister.

"Nice speech, Jenks." I said appreciably to the pixy who landed on my shoulder. The warm dust that sifted from him was a pleasant counterpoint to the cool air in the room.

"Hey, my daughters get scared too, and they're a lot more flippant than she is. Imagine when five of them are frightened at once…" He faked a shudder of dread, and a small smile spread my lips.

"You haven't met her on a good day." I smirked, remembering my silent vow never to get these two together, lest they chatter me or Ivy to death. It had only been a little over a year since I'd taken it, but sometimes it felt like a lifetime ago, at least when it didn't feel like it happened yesterday.

"Yeah, I guess. You handled her okay, too. I think you might make a good mom someday… with a liiiittle bit of practice." He teased, a grin splitting his face.

My mood darkened with his words. The revelation a few months back that I was actually a stunted demon, one of the few hopes their kind had of staving of the long, slow extinction they faced, had all but made it impossible for me to imagine ever having children.

"Not going to happen, Jenks." I muttered darkly, shaking my head.

"Ah, crap on my daisies, I'm sorry, Rache. I forgot. I just keep forgetting about… that." I moved to stand next to Ivy's bed, pulling a second chair close to her. Jenks landed before me as I slumped in it, concern etched across his youthful face. "You know it doesn't change anything, right? You're still my… our best friend." He glanced over his shoulder at Ivy. "She still loves you." It was so quiet, I wasn't sure I'd heard right. It didn't matter; the smile on the pixy's face conveyed better than words what he thought of my demon heritage; he didn't flipping care. And if Ivy's actions were any indication, she didn't either. It was an unexpected relief to have tangible proof that these two didn't judge me because of that.

"Mind if I go take a nap? It's past noon and I see a nice big tissue box over there." I nodded silently and he took flight, landing on a blue cardboard box he quickly buried himself in. Soon, a light snoring came from within it, almost drowned out by the sound of oxygen rushing into Ivy's lungs.

For the first time, I was alone with the unconscious vampire. Ivy's still hand lay tantalizingly close, and I couldn't resist taking it between my own. The feel of those cold, limp fingers in mine, knowing the strength they usually held, tugged at my heart. _Don't torment yourself with guilt…_ Jenks' words echoed. Easier said than done.

"What am I going to do with you?" I asked while stroking the top of her hand with my thumb. If I was perfectly honest I would say the feeling of her soft pale skin under mine felt quite good…

Glancing at Ivy's smooth, perfect face, I noticed for the first time the fresh tear tracks that flowed from her closed eyes. And suddenly, impossibly weakly, the fingers that criss-crossed with mine came to life, squeezing my hand as gently as a butterfly's touch. Ivy's beautiful brown eyes opened slowly, filled to the brim with intense emotions; concern, fear, guilt, pain, and most importantly, love. She had never looked at me with such naked affection before; desire, for me, for my blood, desire underlined and intertwined with a heady amount of love I had seen often in the vampire's eyes, but never like this. It caused a flutter in my stomach I wasn't comfortable examining more closely right now.

"You heard everything, didn't you?" I murmured, feeling myself blush slightly. She nodded weakly in answer.

"Some things are worth sacrificing for, Rachel. What I did for you, for Erica… I don't regret it. Not for one moment. It's a fair exchange." Her voice was a hoarse whisper, yet sounded more beautiful to me than any song. I'd been so afraid to never hear it again…

I wanted to say something, anything in response, but apparently, those few words were all she had strength for. Her head fell back onto her pillow before I could get my thoughts in order. My breath caught, and I found I couldn't breath until her chest started rising and falling again. I didn't want to die, but in this moment, with my best friend injured in body now as well as in mind and in soul, I knew that I wouldn't be able to live with myself if she died for me.

_Your life for mine, uh?_ I thought as I observed the rhythm of her breathing, relieved even though my thoughts were bitter. _Well, you're wrong. It isn't a fair trade. Not even close… _


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Maybe it was all the vampire pheromones in the air, or maybe it was that I had been awake for about 24 hours, and what 24 hours those had been, but when I lay my head down over my arms to rest for a few moments, sleep overcame me almost instantly. After the stress, the anxiety, the fear and… well, every other emotion I'd felt during Erica's confession, pure, dark and dreamless sleep turned out to be the sweetest blessing I could ask for. Floating in that velveteen haze, I could pretend for a moment that nothing had happened, that Ivy was okay, that Erica truly was a careless, petulant vampire, hell, I could even pretend that Jenks wasn't nearing the end of his life; all the things that had made my life miserable recently, none of those existed here.

_What a relief…_

I was so busy relishing that perfect nothingness that the feeling of fingers threading lightly through my hair went almost unnoticed. They were cold but soft, gentle, running through messy strands of my wild hair as easily as a fish through water. Remembering where and how I'd fallen asleep, I realized Ivy was taking advantage…

_Whatever. I guess I can le__t her play with my hair a little. I definitely owe her that much._ I thought, remembering my earlier promise to kiss her if she stayed awake, wondering idly if she would ever take me up on that. I didn't move, finding an odd enjoyment in her touch. It had been so long since Ivy had dared to touch me that even though I didn't want to give her false hope, I kept my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep, letting her little game go on. There was more comfort in that one tiny touch that I'd found in a lot of full-blown hugs.

Things had been so tense between us, ever since I'd given her a definitive "no" on the subject of our blood balance, that, even though she told me she just needed time to find her balance, I'd been worried we wouldn't be able to make things work. She'd spent the last months so afraid to show any kind of affection, afraid that I'd take it the wrong way…

But the worse was perhaps her renewed struggle with her bloodlust; where she once got home calmly hating herself after a blood encounter, she was now snappish and frustrated, downright angry even. I was worried something had shifted permanently in her after our auras had merged; I knew I was denying myself something I wanted by refusing to let her bite me, but I feared I was denying her something that she desperately needed.

It wasn't always terrible, of course; after a few hours she was always back to normal, or as normal as Ivy can be, but during that brief time, it was unbearable to be around her. During period, I unavoidably thought about reconsidering my decision not to let her bite me. I'd even whip up the courage to go to her, to try and talk about it, only to be pushed back by a glare so icy it could probably freeze a volcano over. Ivy always knew what I was thinking, and this was no different.

_And__ she's beyond terrifying when she's angry._

I didn't want to rub it in, and I wanted to keep my head, so I gave her her space and waited for her to get over it, hoping she wouldn't simply up and leave. Some noble part of me almost hoped that, for her sake, she would; she would stand a better chance of getting over me if she didn't live with me, and until she did, there would be no happiness for her.

The rest of me, which felt horribly selfish at times, was content to wait and pretend nothing was wrong, enjoying too much the companionship of the sometimes-anal vampire once she got her wits back. It wasn't always hard grind, after all, or I think both of us would have snapped by now. She was still more open with me than anyone else, and her laughter was still one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. That I had a knack for bringing a smile to her was something in which I found a great deal of pride; forget demon magic, cracking up an abused, introverted vampire was a real challenge.

So yeah, I was enjoying Ivy's touch, even though it was now becoming a little too intimate for my taste. She had tucked my hair behind my ear and her fingers were now tracing the line of my jaw, moving slowly and steadily towards… my neck?

_No. Come on, she wouldn't…_

"Rache-el" Ivy's said in a sing-song voice just as her fingernails found the demon scar buried under my skin. A rush of sensation flooded through me as my eyes flew open. I jumped, trying groggily to get away from her, only to have her hand dart snake-quick to the back of my neck. It buried painfully in my hair in a restraining grip, holding me within arms length.

"Ivy, what the hell…" My scandalized exclamation died instantly as I gazed into Ivy's pure black, hunger filled eyes. There was barely anything else there, barely any recognition; these were the eyes of the perfect predator she was.

It's quite hard to look scary while wearing a paper robe, but a completely vamped out Ivy pulled it off nicely. I didn't know how or why it had happened, but my continued survival now depended on not moving a muscle and not showing any of the soul-stealing fear I felt. Whether I liked it or not, I'd had more than my fair share of practice in this situation. The rules had been branded into me by several brushes with death, and I knew them by heart, now.

"Ivy, please, calm down. Let me go. You know you don't want to do this." My voice was steady and, I hoped, soothing, despite the fear and the slowly ebbing, exquisite sensations she had pulled from me. I had to try and get through to her conscious self, the part of her from which her feelings for me derived from. I knew her hunger was shackled with love, and appealing to it was a sure way to talk her down.

It didn't work, though. Ivy tilted her head as in incomprehension, her unblinking eyes going slowly from my eyes to my neck, where I could feel my pulse pressing wildly against my skin. A cold, cruel smile spread her lips, making my heart stop.

Where her small, sharp canines once sprouted amongst her perfect white teeth was now a pair of longer, vastly more vicious-looking fangs. Ivy was not vamping out; her soul had not been drowned out by instinct and hunger. It was simply gone. She was dead and reborn.

Ivy was an undead. She was hungry. And I was breakfast.

Just as understanding hit me like a train in the face, she moved. I screamed in both pain and sheer terror as she brutally pulled me, one-handed, onto the hospital bed, angling my body so that I lay on my back across her lap. She immediately leaned over me, her dead eyes inches from me. Strands of her gold-tipped hair tickled my face as studied me intently, a glint of enjoyment lighting her face up as she breathed in the scent of my fear. Her exhale reverberated through the core of my being as my scar came fully alive, flaring much stronger than it ever had, causing sensations that rivalled actual blood ecstasy. The passionate moan that slipped past my lips seemed to amuse Ivy, who brought her fingers to my neck again.

_Any more of this and she'll make me climax!_ I thought frantically as a wave of pleasure flowed from my over-stimulated scar to my groin. Using all of my willpower I wrenched my mind from that delicious, mind-numbing stupor and sent it quickly searching for a line.

In almost complete desperation I realized I was too deep underground. I couldn't find a single ounce of power to fend off the hungry vampire who was toying with me. I only had one hope left…

"JENKS!" I screamed, as loud as I could, but my voice was quickly smothered by Ivy's mouth. It wasn't really a kiss; more like she was crushing her lips to mine with bruising strength, but it caused her to moan in turn.

_Where the hell is he?_ My lips already felt swollen and sore. I just barely managed to keep them shut as Ivy's tongue tried to worm its way in. My resistance made her own lips curl against mine.

"Scream for me, Rachel." Ivy purred against my mouth an instant before she grasped my lower lips between her teeth. In one, swift motion she shredded it, my blood flowing from the wound in a crimson stream. She lingered an instant to take a mouthful, then pulled away, her smile tinted red. My hands shot to my lip as soon as she left it. Her saliva had been the only thing that kept the intense pain at bay, and as soon as her mouth left mine, it started throbbing in agony. I just barely managed to stop myself from screaming, the blood in my mouth making me choke.

_God, please, just let her kill me quickly__._ But Ivy, it seemed, wasn't done playing.

She brought her free wrist up to her mouth, her eyes never leaving mine, cold, cruel and unyielding. I watched in morbid fascination as her fangs buried deep within her own flesh, drawing the dark, dead blood from her veins. She held her bloodied wrist over my face, a new spark of… anticipation? in her eyes. Drops of the undead fluid fell on my bloodstained face, hotter than the blood that still flowed freely from my mouth.

"Drink."

The single, harsh word didn't come from Ivy. I managed to turn my head just enough to see Erica's petite form standing in the middle of the room. Her expression was one of pure hatred. Her eyes were as black as Ivy's, the whites red with tears that still flowed down her cheeks. Anger suited her even less than sorrow, but that wasn't the most horrible thing about this picture.

On her shoulder, a look of hard judgement on his face, stood Jenks.

I had to swallow the lump in my throat twice before I could speak, and even then it was in a badly shaking, very small voice. "Why? What is she doing?"

"She's making this whole mess right, you bitch! She died because of you! It's only fair you should give your own life in return! Now drink!"

Fear and pain had kept guilt away from my consciousness, but now that Ivy wasn't actively torturing me, it coated my soul more completely than the demon smut that stained it. My mind went blank and empty but for one thought:

_Ivy is dead__. She's UNDEAD! Because of me. It's my fault. Mine._

I don't recall ever feeling this miserable in my life. Not when Kisten died, not when I thought I'd been bound. Never.

"Drink. Become her scion. It's more honour than you deserve."

I glanced pleadingly at Jenks, finding no compassion in the grim set of his mouth or the narrowing of his eyes. I knew then that Erica was right. Being Ivy's scion was the fate I deserved for ruining her so thoroughly. She had believed I could save her soul, and instead of saving her, I had thrown her head first into her own version of hell.

I reached up, tentatively, my mind reeling at the thought of what I was about to do, for her wrist, the skin cold, smooth and soft as my fingers encircled it. Her arm looming over me came down without resistance; Ivy looked pleased, a vague smile on her lips that would have made her beautiful had she still been alive, but was chilling now that she wasn't.

"I'm so, so sorry, Ivy." I murmured as I brought the wound to my mouth, sealing it around the broken skin as I started pulling. Her blood tasted horrible, a mix of copper and tar, and it caused a searing pain going down. Swallowing live fire ants would probably have been more pleasant, yet as soon as the first mouthful made it all the way down, I couldn't have stopped to save my own soul. Power unlike anything I'd ever felt flowed from Ivy to me, making my body feel lighter, stronger. The world around me was quickly becoming clearer, as if I'd spent my whole life looking through a dirty window that had finally been cleaned.

My gaze came to rest on Ivy's face, her expression a mask of pure bliss, her breath escaping in tiny gasps of pleasure in time with my every greedy pull. Her eyes met mine, the darkly seductive smile coming to her lips showing off her long fangs. I tried to hold on as she pulled her wrist away from my mouth, but even my newfound strength was no match for hers. I knew what she would do now, and how it would seal my fate, yet as terrified as I was now that my mind caught up to my guilty conscience, my body was limp, nerveless.

_W__hat have I done?_ I thought, horrified, as Ivy's hand slipped beneath my head, her arm flexing to bring us eye-to-eye. I couldn't even offer a token resistance. Her bleeding arm snaked around my waist in a lover's embrace, bringing our bodies closer together. She lowered her mouth to my neck, her lips and teeth brushing teasingly over my sensitive skin, her tongue lapping up my blood. I surrendered my will totally to the torrent of pleasure from my scar this time, letting it drown out the pain, the guilt, the fear.

I knew I would enjoy this, sick thought though it was. With a little luck, Ivy might even loose control and kill me… Death at her hand seemed enviable next to what the rest of my life would be like.

The tip of her fangs came to rest lightly on my pulse. I closed my eyes as one final tear leaked down my cheek to mix with the blood that stained my face, and waited for my new life to begin…


	5. Chapter 4

Author's note: While I am thankful for the positive reviews of this chapter, i have to disagree with them; the version I uploaded was, in my opinion, lacking. So, I went back to the keyboard to fix it. Here's what I feel is a much better chapter 4

Chapter 4

"Rachel?"

Someone was shaking me. It wasn't possible, of course; Ivy was still holding me tightly, and no one in their right mind would get close to a vampire and her prey. My mind was probably shying away from things to come and making up some rescuer… who sounded like Ivy?

_Wait a minute…_

"Rachel!" Yes, it was definitely Ivy's grey silk voice calling my name!

However, when I opened my eyes, all I saw were the same two black orbs I had just left. All I felt was a grip, an oddly soft grip, on my shoulder. Instinctively, I jerked away, my back hitting the leather-covered cushion, my breathing panicked, my mind frantically searching for a line before I remembered I was too deep underground.

_Oh, God, no, no, not again! _I freaked. She was reaching for me again! She was, she was… not moving?

"Rachel, it's me. Don't you recognize me?" Ivy's voice was soft, vulnerable. Her eyes, although pure and black, were filled with concern and the first hints of the pain and self-loathing that plagued her soul.

_Her soul? She's… alive?_

The hurt in her eyes didn't have time to bloom. I flung myself at her without any further hesitation, my arms wrapping around her and my face landing in the hollow of her neck. Tears of pure relief streamed down my cheeks to wet her skin. She was alive, she was warm, she smelled so good…

"Rachel?" Her voice was strained, but I couldn't bring myself to care if she bit me or not.

_She's alive! She's alive! _I couldn't stop singing those words in my head, it felt so good to think them, to know that she was still there, all of her.

"Rachel, I'm glad to see you too, but I think you're pulling on my stitches…"

"Oh! Sorry." I answered sheepishly, a hint of a blush creeping up on my face as I pulled away, the last remnants of adrenaline making me feel light-headed. An honest, beautiful smile spread her lips, and she pulled me back into her for a softer, but no less comforting, hug. Not a single twinge came from my scar as she wrapped her arms around me, her hand chastely rubbing my back.

"Bad dream?" She whispered soothingly in my ear.

"Worse nightmare ever." I chuckled, my voice still trembling with relief.

"What about?"

I shook my head. I knew where this conversation would lead if I told her. It would hurt her, she'd blame herself and I'd spend the next half-hour convincing her not to.

"Don't worry about it."

She pushed me gently away to look at me. Her eyes were darkening as she pieced everything together. The wonderful smile that had lit up her face was now quickly disappearing.

"About me?" She said, her voice barely a whisper, but carrying a great deal of pain.

_Shit. So much for __her not knowing…_

"No." I sighed, "Not about you. Not really, anyway." Ivy gave me a look that was half pain, half incredulity. I sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to her to pull her in a hug if worse came to worst. This could take a while…

"In my dream, you were… dead. You were making me your scion." With a disgusted sigh, Ivy averted her eyes. "It wasn't you! It was…" God, I didn't know what it was. Guilt, probably, coupled with my fear of being bound to a vampire.

I cupped Ivy's jaw gently, forcing her to look at me, as much as I could force a vampire many times stronger than me, and smiled compassionately. "It wasn't you, Ivy. You know that you wouldn't hurt me that way. It was a cruel, sadistic dead vamp who had nothing to do with you."

"She had my face…" She whispered reproachfully, the self-loathing I hated with a passion rearing its ugly head.

"That's ALL she had of you." The smile left my face, but my voice carried the conviction I now felt; it wasn't fear of Ivy that had prompted the dream, but fear of losing her, and the belief that I had caused it. "It's just that you were a convenient subject for my imagination, that's all. I'm not afraid of you, Ivy. I trust you."

"You should be. You shouldn't." She shot back bitterly.

"You're not a monster, Ivy. A monster wouldn't have saved me the way you did. And, by the way, if you ever pull off a stunt like you did in that alley again, I'm kicking your ass from here back to the turn!"

Ivy seemed taken aback by the anger in my voice. "He would have killed you!"

"He almost killed YOU!"

"The key word here is "almost"!"

"No, it's "killed"! As in dead! In your case, as in undead! Because of me! Do you think I could live with that? In that goddamn dream you feel so bad about, I actually accepted to be your scion because I felt it was just the punishment I fucking deserved for getting you KILLED!"

Ivy glared at me, and I glared right back. For a long moment, we stared into each other's eyes, pitting our wills against one another. I wouldn't let her beat herself up, and for once, I felt I might actually win. And I did.

"If we want to keep arguing, we should keep it down before we wake them up." She muttered, a blush creeping up on her pale face, her eyes lowering in defeat. She nodded once, indicating she was convinced. A smug grin split my face; winning a stare-down contest against Ivy was about as common as being struck by lightning, and a hell of a lot more gratifying.

"I should wipe that smile off your face." She growled under her breath, still not looking at me.

"You're welcome to try, fang-girl." I laughed cockily in answer, a second before one of her thin eyebrow rose in that confident manner I always envied.

_Oops… looks like she'll take me up on that._

Another second passed before I felt her fingers creep up, feather light, over the side of my neck.

_Well, isn't that underhanded…_

"Uh, Ivy?" Her fingers traveled lightly over my skin, teasingly shy of my scar yet never quite touching it. The simple thought that they might, however, was enough to send a slow wave of desire down my spine. Her eyes rose to meet mine, the heat in them making my breath catch.

"You're not smiling anymore… but I think you need to learn your lesson. So, here it is; do you want to know why I'm so crazy about you, Rachel? It didn't sound like you knew earlier." The way she said my name… god, it was like the sound itself was caressing me, in a way that hands or lips simply couldn't imitate.

"Ivy, that's not fair…" I whined, already feeling flustered. Her eyes showed some black, but not nearly enough for her to be vamping out. She knew full well what she was doing.

_Okay, so the smile's __gone, a zillion points for you, I bow to your greatness, even though you cheated… you can stop now… please._

Somehow, I couldn't bring myself to push her hand away. This was quickly becoming much more than I could handle…

"All's fair in love and war, Rachel."

I swallowed hard, unsure what was about to happen. "Which one is this?"

"God, I don't know, Rachel. I'll tell you when I figure it out." Ivy leaned slowly towards me, her free hand coming to rest on my cheek, her thumb brushing my lips. Her face was inches from mine now, so close that our breaths mingled. Her presence was simply intoxicating, so much so that I had to shut my eyes, afraid I'd drown into those deep brown eyes which seemed to take up my entire world.

"I'm crazy about you because no one in their right mind would ever talk to me the way you just did. Most people have the good sense to be afraid of me, but not you. You've stared into the face of the worst of me, and you're still here. You still chose to stay with me."

"So you like me because I'm stupid?" I answered flippantly, hoping that humour might break the smothering tension, but it only made her chuckle lightly.

"No. I like your strength, your wit, your passion. I like every way in which you complete me. You're everything I could ever want in a companion, Rachel."

Her grip was nowhere near restraining. I just had to step away and all of this would just be a slightly awkward moment we could both pretend was our own faults, her instincts and my stupidity meeting halfway, as they always did, to make the tensions between us worse.

So why was I subjecting myself to this?

_(__Because it feels good, doorknob._ _It feels right to be close to her like this.)_

_But she's not going to bite me… is she?_

_(__It doesn't look that way, no. So don't try to hide behind the vamp stuff.)_

_And she's not vamping out or pulling an aura, right?_

_(__Right. You're totally free to move, if you want.)_

_Then why can't I stop her?_

_(__Take a hint…)_

_What?_

_(__What, what?)_

_What do you mean a hint?_

_(__If I told you, it wouldn't be a hint now, would it?)_

_You're not very helpful…_

_(__Hey! I'm just your inner voice. You have to decide what you want!)_

Did I want Ivy to do this? To… kiss me? I didn't have the scar as an excuse this time; this was all her and all me. There would be no going back if I let her do this; we would both have to abide by the outcome. If I wanted to chicken out, I had to do it now.

"You trust me, even when you shouldn't. You stay, even when you should run away screaming. You listen to your heart, even if you don't understand what it means when it tells you to stay."

"You're my friend. You need me… and I need you."

A soft, warm smile came to her lips. "More than you know, Rachel… I hope more than you'll ever know." I couldn't figure out if she was talking about me, or herself. "But I told you this once, didn't I? You love me, even if you don't know what to do about it."

Her hand moved slowly over my face, into the curly hair that framed it. She gently tucked it behind my ear, then took a slow breath, her senses dissecting my mood, my emotions, all the things I simply couldn't hide from her. Her voice was calm, soothing even, when she spoke again, betraying none of the desire she felt. How I envied her emotional control sometimes…

"Please, don't be afraid, dear heart. I want to make things clearer for you. If you want me to stop, say so now, and I'll stop."

I stayed silent. This was all so confusing… I knew I cared for Ivy. A lot, probably more than "just friends" warranted. Yet I was so afraid; of finding out if I liked girls, yes, but much more importantly, of finding out if I didn't; if I slept with her, and it turned out I didn't like it… could our friendship survive? Did we stand enough to gain to risk everything this way?

"If you don't say anything, I'll have to assume you don't object, Rachel…" Her grey voice was starting to betray the first hints of excitement and anticipation.

I knew I didn't have much time before the choice was made for me, but I still couldn't bring myself to say anything, even as the hand on my neck moved to my waist, her arm wrapping around me in an eerie echo of the dream I'd had just a few minutes ago. An involuntary shiver ran through me, even though the strange brand of fear I felt now was light years behind that mind-numbing terror.

"Ivy…"

"Don't be afraid. I'm here." Her grip tightened almost imperceptibly around me. She leaned closer, and closer, until she was everything I could see. The whole world spun for a second, then faded from my awareness. Ivy's eyes were all there was, and this time, I was drowning in them.

_T__oo late…_

"Time's up, Rachel." The silky softness of Ivy's voice barely had time to register before the first, tiny brush of her lips against mine sent a shockwave of heat and emotions through my whole body. I was falling through the sky, and my only hope was that Ivy would be there to catch me.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

No Trent. No Al. No Minias. No Cormel. No Skimmer. No Marshall. Not even Jenks.

There was nothing and no one else; just Ivy, warm, solid and _real_ against me, her grip just tight enough to bring our bodies together, to assure me that she would be there, that she would catch me once the passion subsided. The thin paper robe she wore blocked none of the enveloping cloud of pheromones that came off her and systematically loosened the wire-tight tension in my body. I'd started off not quite resisting, but hesitating, that hesitation progressively replaced with abandonment.

_So confusing… so wrong._

My lips that had been closed against Ivy's sensual assault so far parted slowly, letting in a smooth, velveteen tongue that prodded my mouth gently and thoroughly, eliciting a passionate moan deep in my throat. Ivy tasted of oranges, and something else, something spicy and exotic, something definitely female and, in some indescribable way, completely _Ivy._

_So right._

My mind was swirling in a whirlwind of sensations and emotions. It had been so long since anyone had touched me this way, and the tank top I wore offered Ivy plenty of skin to skilfully caress and explore. Her fingernails dragged lightly into my flesh as they moved across my shoulder from my neck, down my arm and back up again, the caress making a long shudder of enjoyment run like electricity in its wake.

Her other hand found its way under my shirt, just at the small of my back, and the kiss broke as I gasped and moved into her touch. Her palm was so cold against my fevered skin that goosebumps broke all over me, but the pleasant contrast only made me more deeply aware of the exploring hand.

Our foreheads rested together for an instant, her breathing even and deep, serene even, while my own was frantic and shallow. The cool hand at my back was now slowly massaging its way up my spine, causing me to arch back in pleasure. In the blink of an eye, Ivy's lips darted to my exposed neck, spreading steamy, lingering kisses. I unconsciously turned my head the other way, offering more of myself to her attentions. The bed creaked lightly as Ivy shifted me closer to herself, her mouth moving upwards to find the tiny sensitive spot just below my ear.

"God, you smell so good. It's killing me, Rachel." Her voice in my ear betrayed the loneliness and vulnerability that lurked under her current seductive mien. Her own incomparable scent of citrus and incense was filling my senses, potent and heady with the pheromones she unconsciously gave off, those same pheromones that made me accept her hand under my shirt, her face buried in my hair and an embrace much more intimate that I would ever have agreed to normally.

(_Liar…_)

_Shut up, you!_

_(Lie, lie, liiiiie!)_

My snappy inner comeback never came, cut off by the abrupt return of Ivy's mouth on my neck. She was much more aggressive this time, her teeth roughing against my skin, invoking half pleasure and half pain. I'd have one hell of a hickey once this was over...

Her hand shot to the back of my neck to hold me unmoving as I gasped at the harsher feeling, my consciousness coming back to the surface for an instant and making me move away. My pained response briefly stirred Ivy's need to dominate, but she quickly, and guiltily, fought it down, becoming careful and attentive once again.

"I'm sorry." She breathed throatily, the shifting of her lips against my sore skin making me shudder.

"S'okay." I answered softly after swallowing my fear. I was barely aware of what I was mumbling, and too lost in confusion and enjoyment to care.

My words made Ivy ponder my acceptance for a moment, her tongue lingering over the raw spot she'd created. Her grip tightened around me briefly as she pulled me onto her lap as easily as she would a child.

Her muzzling mouth then moved across my throat to the other side of my neck, the scarred side. Carefully, she grazed the edges of my scar, letting my imagination and memories provide the sensations that she kept denying me. In hindsight, it was probably more arousing to have her tease the hell out of me than actually letting my scar flood me with pleasure and promise.

"Oh, God, Ivy…" I whispered with the exhale of one erratic breath. She was so good at this, it was scary… Confusion be damned, her sheer skill had me responding to her, my eyes closing of their own accord in the blissfulness of the moment. I used this opportunity at closeness to bury my hands in her hair, to finally discover, once and for all how soft it really was. As it turned out my imagination never did it justice; the liquid smoothness of those short black and gold strands made me long for her longer hair, if only to have more of it to thread my fingers through.

Ivy's breathing hitched as I massaged her scalp, her lithe body tensing slightly against mine with my response. Something was shifting in her, and the (very small, very quiet) part of my mind that could still think clearly warned me that we were about to find ourselves on familiar, forbidden grounds. Yet for the life of me, I couldn't bring myself to care. I was on for the ride; can't get off until it's over.

"Rachel…" Ivy took a deep breath, bracing herself for a rejection I wasn't sure I wanted to give her. "Will you share this with me?"

I was dimly aware in that dark, almost cut-off corner of my mind that she was asking for my blood… again. That same part of me reminded me of my vow never to let her taste it again. A small spark of fear ran through my mind, the remains of the terror I'd felt when I thought I'd been bound, but it was almost instantly stifled by Ivy's soothing voice. My face was resting between her hands as she made me look at her.

"Don't be afraid, please. I can't stand it. I never could stand it." The look in her absolute dark eyes was pure longing. "Give this to me, Rachel, please." She pleaded, her voice soft, coaxing. "There will be no pain. I'll never hurt you again, I promise."

She kissed my dread away passionately and hungrily, kissed me into complete, moaning breathlessness, her mouth lingering on my lower lip unwittingly setting off the tiny, unwanted scar there. God, she was a good kisser… But even through the pleasurable fogginess that clouded my mind, the events to come played out in my head with a mix of anticipation and anxiety. I knew Ivy had me against the ropes; the rush of desire the dormant vampire saliva had set off in me would send her into a fever pitch. She would play with my scars in full next time, making my blood sing with need, and in the state of mind I was in, I wouldn't be able to say no when she asked to bite me.

_(You know you want it.)_

_I do… that's what scares me._

_(__How so?)_

_How far am I willing to go to feel that way? What cost am I willing to pay?__ I can't play this game anymore. Not even for her._

_(Is it really blood you want? Or even sex? Don't you think it may be something more? That these things may only be a mean to an end, an expression of what you really want?)_

…

_(Love?)_

…

_(You still can't face how you feel about her, do you? What you want from her?)_

…_I don't know._

_(And yet you let her kiss you.)_

…_I don't know. Why can't my heart make any sense?_

_(Because it doesn't have to make sense; it just has to say its line and leaves you to deal with the consequences of its fickleness.)_

_I DON'T KNOW! Is it her who's making me feel this way? Or __the things she could make me feel if I let her? I know I care about her, I _like_ her, but is it the vampire I _love,_ or Ivy?_

_(What if Ivy _is_ the vampire? Do you really think any vamp could make you feel this way?)_

"I know I can do this, Rachel. For you, I could do anything." I could feel Ivy's breath on my scar now, the slight trembling in her hands as she poised herself to bite me giving away her desire. I remembered how it felt when our auras had merged, how her soul, her very being had poured into me and me into her. There was no word to describe how awesome it felt, or for the fear that had ensued when the flashback of Kisten's killer occurred. I'd never felt this vulnerable, this absolutely scared. I never wanted to feel this way again.

_(You__'re lying to yourself again. You felt worse just minutes ago. When you thought Ivy died because of you.)_

_She's my best friend. It was just guilt._

_(It was despair. You committed suicide.) _

_It was a dream!_

_(You don't get to lie in your dreams. You wished for death, Juliet.)_

I was spared further soul searching when Ivy did something that shocked me to heavens and back. She let go, completely and instantly, as if touching me burned her. No, shocking wasn't exactly the right word, actually, unless you consider hitting a wall in a burning car doing barrel rolls at 200 miles per hours during a hurricane merely shocking. Her absence, and its abruptness, left me speechless, breathless, and with the approximate IQ of a brain-dead slug.

"What the hell am I doing?" Ivy's voice was panicked, her black eyes frantic. They flashed back to brown in a heartbeat, shame and fear surfacing from their unfathomable depths. "Rachel… God, I'm so sorry."

"Huh?" The faint utterance was all my fried brain could allow.

"You have to believe me, I didn't mean to!"

"Wuh?" Had she bitten me without my permission? I didn't feel like she had…

"Damn it! Damn it back to the Turn! I just had to go and ruin everything didn't I?! Damn it!"

"Huh?"

"Rachel, I swear, it was the painkillers talking… acting…" She sighed in frustration, her face burying in her hands. "God, I can just barely think straight. I'm sorry."

"Huh."

_Painkillers… Right! Painkillers!__ She was shot, she was cut open, and now she's high!_

_(And that's relevant how?)_

_Well, I was so relieved after the nightmare; I wanted to touch her, to make sure she was really okay. She took advantage because the drugs loosened her up, and it felt so good because of her pheromones. That's all it was._ _It makes perfect sense._

_(… You don't really believe that, do you?)_

_Well, it's the truth._

_(… Keep telling yourself that. I'm sure eventually, you'll believe it.)_

"Say something, please… I swear I'm sorry."

"Huh!"

_(Gee, forget the runner business; you have to __see Trent about a position as a speechwriter. You know, if you want to play unaffected, you should try not to sound like a dyslexic idiot.)_

_Shut up…_

_(Hey, you think she'll notice your eyes are the size of saucers?)_

_Shut u__p._

_(__Forget that, they're really more like dinner plates.)_

_Shut. Up._

_(You should really close you mouth before you drool all over her.)_

_Shut up!_

_(__Hmm, I hope this wasn't your lucky underwear, 'cause I think it's ruined now. God, come on, she barely touched you! You're such a slut!)_

_SHUT UP!!_

_(Ha, nah, I'm just messing with you.)_

_What's your job supposed to be again?_

_(Counselling.)_

_Counselling?_

_(Yeah, counselling. As in, your life is so screwed up, you need counselling.)_

_You really__, really, _really_ suck at it!_

_(…)_

"Rachel, I'm begging you, say something… scream at me if you want, just… anything?"

_I can't, not while I'm debating whether or not to kiss you again…_

_Hey, stop talking with my voice!_

I was silent for a long moment as I regained some semblance of composure (and dreamed up some absolutely horrifying fate for the world's most annoying inner voice). Ivy looked about as confident as a newborn kitten, as if I was about to pass a life or death judgement on her. Her remorse was painfully obvious in her avoidance of eye contact and her lowered head, her short black hair sweeping just short of her eyes.

_Okay, time to drop the hammer. __Am I angry at her? _I wondered, soon realizing that, deep down, I wasn't, not really. We had both almost died in the last 24 hours. Considering the emotion, the pain, the near-loss… yeah, kissing me had been a mistake, but I could forgive a lot worse than her… ravishing me right now.

"Ivy, on account of you saving my life, and being high right now, I think I can let this slide." My smile was a little shaky, a little unsure, maybe because I could still feel the dull throb of the mother of all hickeys on my neck. God, Jenks would never let me live this down…

Ivy didn't look convinced at first, her eyes darting everywhere but conspicuously avoiding mine, or my neck, her fingers fidgeting on her chest for a cross that had been gone for over a year. Only when my smile steadied instead of faltering could I see her letting herself hope that she hadn't ruined everything as she feared.

"You're not angry?" She asked tentatively, and I shook my head in response.

"Circumstances were what they were. We're just unlucky that way, I guess." I shrugged, and a dry, slightly bitter chuckle escaped her.

"Yeah, you're probably right. So, are we okay?" I thought I detected a tiny note of hope in her voice, hope that perhaps something had changed with that kiss in a positive way.

"Nothing's changed, Ivy." I put emphasis on the word _nothing_, and the small glimmer of hope died. I hated doing that to her, but false hope would lead her nowhere. She couldn't keep pinning after me that way; it wasn't fair for either of us.

"I guess that's something, then." Her answering smile was a little resigned, but honest nonetheless. "Would you take it the wrong way if I hugged you again? With a mostly clear head this time?"

It was my turn to chuckle. When she wasn't molesting me, it was kind of nice to have her a bit loosened up; I didn't get two hugs in a row from her often.

"I wish things were different, Ivy, I really do. But they're not." I sighed against my friend's chest, letting her have this one little contact, to assure her we were okay. We were friends; we could hug each other, right?

"I know, Rachel." She answered mildly, her arms slipping from around me easily this time "I'm sorry if I make you feel that your friendship isn't enough sometimes." She took a deep breath that sounded suspiciously like a weary sigh. "I promise I'll find a way to make it work. Just give me more time. It's hard right now, but nothing worth having is ever easy to get."

"Your control as improved a lot. You're on the right track, Ivy." I said softly, an odd feeling of pride swelling in my chest. I didn't voice how I felt about it; it felt kind of condescending to be proud of her, like she were a child and not the most powerful living vamp in the city.

But then I considered how far she'd come, how long it had been since she vamped out on me, I realised pride was most appropriate… yes, our situation was frustrating at times, but there was no denying how much more balanced and stable it was, and the worst of the efforts to make it so were on her part. That little bit of proof that she did value our friendship as much, if not more, than I did warmed me to my core and made it much easier to forgive her slip-up.

Now that I looked back on what just happened, it was phenomenal that she could handle so much physical contact and still manage to pull back in time to avoid biting me. A few short months ago, I'd have probably been too busy dying from blood loss right about now to be embarrassed by a kiss.

However, my words of encouragement only made Ivy blush. She nervously bit her lip, as if I'd said something deeply embarrassing instead of congratulating her.

"What is it? Can't handle a simple compliment?" I said teasingly. I was one of the few people who knew how shy Ivy could be, and who would keep their head if they dared to tease her about it.

"No! That's not…" She was almost flustered for a moment, her eyes lowered as she searched for her words, then an oddly peaceful look and a hint of a sad smile graced her features. "Rachel, it's not that this isn't pleasant, but… would you mind getting off me? It's a bit hard to concentrate with you sitting on me."

It took me a moment to realise what she was talking about. I blushed furiously as I realised I was still sitting on Ivy's (_comfortable_)

_SHUT UP YOU!_

…lap. My scramble to get off her was, to say the very least, ungraceful, and filled with a noncommittal muttering that could as well be an apology as a long string of curses.

The leather of the chair was cold when I settled myself back in it, and I yelped when it touched the skin of my back where my tank top had been hiked up by Ivy's exploration. She smiled sheepishly as I scrambled to pull the hem of my shirt back where it belonged, more heat creeping up on my face at the reminder of another, much softer, icy caress there.

"You better still be high, Ivy. Otherwise, you'll spend a lot longer in that bed." I threatened, glowering at the smirking vampire, but my idle threat only broadened the grin on her lips.

"I can't help it. You're so easy, Ra-" The beeping of the heart rate monitor sped up at the same time Ivy's body tightened in a spasm, cutting off her reply. Her face scrunched up in pain, her breathing becoming fast and shallow.

"Ivy!" I exclaimed, a fresh wave of anguish replacing my embarrassment. Couldn't we get a few minutes of peace, damn it?!

"I'm fine." She panted, her hand rising in a placating gesture before I could reach her. I stood next to the bed like a deer in the headlight, concern digging an ugly crease into my forehead.

"To answer your question, I'm officially no longer under influence." With a barely suppressed groan, she forced her body to relax and accept the pain. Her willpower was impressive, to say the least, her pained breathing calming impossibly fast, although tiny hiccups disrupted its methodical slowness.

"Has the morphine worn off?" I asked stupidly, only getting a short grunt from Ivy. "Crap. Just try to relax, don't move, I'll get a nurse." I rose to exit the room, my boots clacking loudly in the silence that was barely broken by Ivy's breathing

"No!" The single word rooted me in place. "I told you, I'm fine. Sit down… please" The last took some of the sting away from her words, but I still shot her a pointed look. The reason for her refusal was obvious, and ridiculous.

"Don't be stupid, Ivy."

The vampire laughed humourlessly. "That's exactly what I'm trying to do. No painkillers, Rachel."

"So you'd rather be in pain than… what exactly?"

"…Than act the way I just did again. No. Painkillers." She repeated, a new edge creeping into her voice. Her eyes were starting to dilate, and my own widened in surprise. Would she really pull an aura over this?

_Holy crap…_I thought, realising why she was being difficult,_ she was_ really _worried I'd leave over that kiss!_

However, there was an alternative to drugs to calm the pain that I could offer her. It was a long shot, but still, I had to try, at least. Call me an optimist, but I reached into the pocket of my leather pants, feeling for the small wooden disc there. I knew I had a pain amulet and a finger stick somewhere in here…

"You know I won't take it, so really, it's useless to invoke your charm, Rachel." Ivy, as usual, could just about read my mind, and beat me to the punch. Just as I expected, she didn't take kindly to my idea of using magic on her.

"It's your choice, Ivy." I stood my ground, annoyed by her reluctance to use the magic I offered her even though she was in a great deal of pain. "The morphine or the pain amulet?"

"Neither." It was impressive that she could pack so much menace in two syllables, her pulled-back lips exposing her sharp canines in an obviously threatening manner. If I was smart, I would back off and leave her alone; not agonising an upset, pained vampire is a sure way to keep all your fluids intact, or in Ivy's case, your head.

Who ever said I was smart? I tried, sure, but this didn't look like one of the days I succeeded.

"You don't want the drugs because you want to keep your control intact, and you'll still be in complete control with the amulet, I swear. You don't have to hurt, Ivy." I tried to reason with her, even if I knew I had better chances at stopping the sun from rising.

Ivy's eyes flashed to pure black. I could feel her presence starting to swirl around me, cold, hard, dominating, vampiric. And nothing at all like the woman she really was.

To be honest, it irritated more than terrified me. That's definitely a habit I had to get rid of…

"One of these days, you'll have to tell me what you have against magic." I said, aggravated. "I use pain amulets all the time."

"Don't look at me if you get injured all the time, witch." Ivy's voice was dripping with sarcasm, and the pain made it harsher than she probably intended. Her jab stung more than it should have; it had been a long time since she called me _witch_, and I didn't miss it_._ However, I had more pressing issues to deal with than my own emotional wimpness.

"Would you please stop being such a jackass?" My voice was rising, which I knew was pointless. Meeting anger with anger just couldn't work against Ivy; she had a bottomless pit of frustration and other negative emotions to throw in my face. I didn't stand a chance at whittling her down.

Her answering growl sounded almost feral. I think the only reason I wasn't pinned against a wall was the amount of pain she was in. Maybe I should just back off…

But an instant later, the cavalry arrived.


	7. Chapter 6

* * *

Chapter 6

"Get off, V." A melodious voice, as silky as Ivy's but slightly higher pitched, rose behind me half a second before its owner materialized next to me. Erica looked a lot better now than she had before she fell asleep, the dark bags under her eyes and the figurative weight slumping her shoulders down gone.

"Stay out of this, Rica." Ivy muttered between clenched teeth, the tone of her voice not nearly as murderous as it had been a minute ago. What do you know? Ivy had trouble screaming at her little sister.

"Like hell I will! Rachel's offering you relief, and I won't stand by and watch you refuse it because you're too much of a pig-headed, overgrown crybaby to accept it!"

Apparently, Erica had heard everything, too. Was I the only one who didn't pretend to sleep so she could eavesdrop?

"I don't want it. I don't need it!" Ivy argued, though she lost some of their credibility with the rawness the pain had given her voice. Her hand rose through her hair to tuck behind her ear. Nervousness now… How interesting; could Erica really win an argument against her older, badder sister?

Only in my life does the most normal family scenes happen in a hospital after a firefight… Still, it felt odd to see Ivy arguing with a younger version of herself. Maybe it was seeing someone else who wasn't afraid to argue with her; it was a select club, and thus far, Erica was turning out to be the most impressive of us.

Okay, maybe I was a little afraid to argue with Ivy, but I still considered myself an honorary member at least.

"Oh, that is such a load of crap! I can smell your pain from over here, V."

"It's bearable." If I didn't know Ivy better, that might have sounded like whining.

"I don't care, it's not necessary! God, Ivy, _I_ used amulets before! Nothing to be afraid of, I can tell you."

Erica turned face abruptly, her attention coming to rest on the amulet in my hand, her eyes as black as Ivy's. An involuntary shiver ran down my spine, and I thanked God I wasn't caught in the crossfire. Ivy alone, I could handle, but Ivy plus Ivy Light? Hugh…

"Could you give me that?" My worry died with the calm in her voice. She wasn't vamping out, and neither was Ivy; it was anger that made their eyes go black, not instinct.

"Uh…"

I hesitated for a moment. The amulet was uninvoked, and to prime it would require me to shed three drops of my blood…

_Let's see, blood + very angry vamp who wants to throttle me + angry vamp who wants to throttle the other vamp very nasty, quite possibly bloody mess._

Even with the rest of the day to put it in perspective, this seemed like a very stupid decision.

"What? What's wrong?" Erica asked, her eyes darting from my face to Ivy, as if she was worried her sister would vamoose if she didn't keep an eye on her.

"Hum, the amulet's not primed." I answered hesitatingly. I wanted to use the amulet, but I worried that Ivy might use this as an excuse not to use it. And, honestly, I wasn't sure I wanted to risk it either.

"So what? Just prime it."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"Why?"

Ivy smiled darkly, knowingly. "She just knows better than to draw blood in a room full of vampires, or to piss me off without reason too, for that matter. Maybe you should take notes, Rica." The nickname sounded off next to her sneered, half-threatening words. I knew that deep down, she didn't mean them; if there was one thing Ivy hated above all else, it was scaring those she loved.

Erica didn't seem scared in the least, her burst of cocky laughter dousing any attempts by Ivy at intimidation. "You've never broken Mom's favourite vase or gotten home wasted, V. I stopped being afraid of your black eyes about ten years ago, so save your aura for someone it works on." She turned her attention to me, her voice a lot softer. "Could you invoke it, please? She's just trying to scare you; a few drops of blood won't do anything."

"Rachel, don't." Ivy's voice was authoritative, but quickly losing its edge. Against two persons who argued with her without fear, she found herself engaged in an uphill battle, one she was steadily losing.

"Sorry, V, but you're in pain, and I neither of us wants to see you that way, no matter how irritating you can be. Do it, Rachel. It'll be alright. I'll catch her if she tries anything."

"I'm faster and stronger than you, Rica."

"Not with a bullet in you, you're not!"

"They took the bullet out! I'm fine! I told you about a hundred times already!"

"You're IMPOSSIBLE!"

"I'M impossible?! God, the two of you make me look like the most reasonable person on Earth!"

"Think about what you just said, V. You've really set the bar high as far as bullshit goes this time."

"Don't swear!"

"Oh, sis, MAKE ME!"

I sighed while watching the exchange. Kids. Never mind that Ivy was over four years older than me, (and please, don't remind me of her thirtieth birthday, I just stopped having nightmares) Erica and her were still sisters, with everything that implied, which included severely reduced mental age when opinions diverged.

I knew I was going against Ivy wishes as I pried the finger stick from my pocket, but she had been hurt saving me. Release from pain was the least I could do, whether she wanted it or not. She deserved it, and she'd get it, even if I had to knock her out to get her to accept it, although that might prove difficult to do with my splat gun lying abandoned in a dark alley somewhere…

The tip of my finger throbbed as I massaged three drops of bright red blood out of the tiny wound the finger stick had inflicted. I kept an eye on Erica and Ivy during the whole process, self-preservation dictating that I be wary around two high-strung predator who could be set off by the scent of my blood, but they were too busy glaring and snapping at each other to pay much attention to me.

My whole body went numb a second after the third drop hit the small redwood disc. This was a heavy duty amulet, much stronger, I was sure, than anything the hospital carried; with the way the last year and a half had gone, I'd just stopped bothering with anything else than the strongest pain spells I could stir.

"There you go." I said, handing the primed amulet to Erica and unwittingly ending a stare down contest, but it was a stupid thing to do anyway, since vampires don't blink when their eyes go black. "What are you going to do with it? Short of making her swallow it, you know she'll just throw it away."

"Trust me." Erica replied with a wink while juggling the small disc from one hand to the other. "It's all a matter of "monkey see, monkey do"."

"I can still hear both of you." Ivy muttered sulkily under her breath as Erica came to sit next to her. She leaned onto the bed, offering the amulet in her open palm, not at all put off by Ivy's glare. Of course, since she had grown up with an undead mom, Ivy didn't look half as intimidating to her as she did to me.

"See? I didn't grow a third eye. I can still speak properly. I don't smell bad. My hair didn't catch on fire. I'm fine, Ivy, and you'll be too. There's nothing to be afraid of." Erica spoke calmly, without any of her earlier mockery and bravado. She was trying to get Ivy to overcome a phobia; nothing to laugh about here.

Ivy didn't agree with her, though. I only saw the blur that was her arm whipping out, then heard the amulet clatter on the floor. For the next minutes I watched Erica tirelessly rise from the chair and pick up the amulet, only so Ivy could knock it from her hand blindingly fast over and over again.

After a long moment of this tedium, the amulet was finally knocked at my feet, and I decided to try my hand at this. I reached for the discarded amulet, beating Erica to it.

"Let me try?" I asked the petite vampire.

"Sure." She shrugged, a smile that said "hell will freeze over before I give up" lighting her face. My opinion of the young vamp went through the roof; I would be just about ready to give up if Ivy had struck me about fifty times in a row.

"Don't let her intimidate you." She advised in a, useless, conspiratorial whisper. "She's just a big softy inside. All bark and no bite."

"Uh, yeah, you can tell she's all warm and fluffy. I mean, the sharp teeth, the growling and the black eyes… a real pussycat. Who could resist, she's just so cute."

"That's the spirit!" Erica laughed, light hearted, almost happy in her conviction that we would succeed in forcing that amulet upon Ivy…

"I'm still here…" … and Ivy herself muttered darkly, utterly annoyed by our efforts to do so.

As I walked towards the bed, I found myself wishing I had Erica's confidence; yes, at heart Ivy was soft and vulnerable, but that didn't mean she couldn't bite (figuratively and literally) when she felt cornered. All bark and no bite was the least appropriate way to describe her in my opinion. Crazy vamps…

Ivy wouldn't look at me when I sat down next to her; she seemed deeply entranced by the ventilation system in the room, and not at all interested in looking at me. She didn't look too good, either. Her usually ghostly, perfect white complexion was bleak and grey from the pain and blood loss. Sweat still trickled down her forehead and matted her hair. It tugged at me to see her so obviously suffering, knowing she didn't have to and I had a means to help her.

"Ivy." I called out softly. "Ivy, look at me."

The soft tone of my voice didn't get me an answer, of course. That would have been much too easy.

"Ivy, stop pouting and look at me." I said with a little more heat, a slight pause between each clearly enunciated word.

I heard Erica snicker behind me at the same time Ivy huffed, as if she was offended that I would even suggest she could do something as childish as pouting.

"Vamps don't pout. We… brood. It's much more dramatic." Erica mocked, earning herself a mostly useless glare from her sister, which she answered with a radiant smile. I suppressed my own desire to grin as Ivy brought her attention to me, her withering leer finding much more purchase in my own psyche. Maybe we shouldn't mock her. Ivy tended to be prideful, and pushing her too far would only make her clam up… more.

"Erica, I don't think this'll work." I turned on the chair to face the younger vampire "Could you see if you can find her something to drink? Orange juice?"

Okay, the bribery attempt was as obvious as they come, but still, I get points for trying, right?

Erica's brown eyes met mine for a moment, then travelled over my face to my neck, a gesture that, for once, didn't cause me any particular unease. Her smile took on a private, knowing quality I didn't immediately understand as she turned to leave.

"Sure. I'll leave you two ladies alone."

Her steps graceful and silent, she strolled out, looking like a runaway model without even trying in her dark, simply elegant clothes. A stab of jealousy shot through my heart; sure, vampire culture may suck, but the perks of vampirism sure looked tempting sometimes.

Wait… _you two ladies_?

"Does she…?"

"Yes, she thinks you're my girlfriend." Ivy sighed tiredly, her thoughts faster than mine as they often were. "And no, I didn't tell her that you were, she drew her own conclusion." She added, her eyes lingering over the same spot Erica's had.

I groaned in sudden understanding. It wasn't the vamp scars Erica had been looking at, it was that huge hickey Ivy had given me.

Ivy only shrugged and sighed some more. She was getting tired again. "Does it really matter, Rachel? It makes her happy to believe I'm with someone nice. Can't we let her?"

I nodded as I recalled how wrong it had been to see Erica so depressed, so lifeless. Despite her teasing, her sister's happiness was an issue of great importance to Erica; pretending to be in a relationship with Ivy seemed like a fair exchange to keep a smile on those lips.

"Okay." I agreed with a quick nod. "Now, about that pain amulet…"

Ivy rolled her eyes, and I smiled a little. It was actually a massive improvement right there; half an hour ago, she was snarling at me…

"You won't stop trying to push this thing on me, will you?" I shook my head, my smile broadening and becoming a little sheepish. "And I won't accept it, either. So were does that leave us, Rachel?"

"Nowhere…." I thought for a second, my whole body without the slightest sensation because of the amulet I still clutched between my fingers. "Give me your hand, Ivy."

"What? Why?" She asked warily, her pupil-black eyes narrowing.

"We're going to take baby steps, that's all. "

There was a slight pause, during which Ivy stared at me like I had grown horns and a tail.

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't…" She blew an irritated puff of air, her expression exasperated and maybe a little queasy. "Rachel, I don't like magic, okay? It's nothing personal."

"Have you even tried it once?" I asked, careful to keep any kind of edge from my voice. "How do you know how it feels like if you never have?"

Ivy shot me a strange look, one I couldn't decipher, but I could practically hear her thinking _I could turn this on you pretty damn quick, my little witch._ Then again, maybe I could too…

"Ivy, you asked me once to take a leap of faith with you, and I trusted you enough to do it. Maybe you could return the favour and trust me this time? Let me hold your hand?"

Ivy seemed taken completely aback, speechless for a second, then scoffed harshly.

"Oh, yes! Really, what a glorious precedent, Rachel! Trying to find a blood balance has just turned out so well, now hasn't it?"

"It's not the outcome that matters Ivy, it's you trusting me with this and trying!" I forged ahead, unaffected by her cynism. "I trusted you both times when you bit me, and I still do, maybe more now than ever! We failed, yes, but we tried. Now I'm asking you to try, the same way you did. So what if you're scared? Do you think I wasn't scared at all the first time? God, you always know what I feel better than I do, and I was scared halfway out of my mind back in Mackinaw."

Ivy was silent for a moment, and her voice was starting to betray the slip of her resolve when she spoke again, barely more than whispered. "I'm not… scared."

"No, I don't think you are. You're just hesitating before you throw yourself over a ledge." I held out my hand, the amulet in my open palm. "Even I hesitated the first time I used my own magic on myself."

One of Ivy's thin eyebrows rose almost mockingly.

"You? Cautious?"

I met her chocolate brown eyes over the flat of my hand, the amulet laying between us like an unknown promise.

"Yeah, me. Magic is easy to stir, Ivy, it's using your own stuff it that's hard, because you have to believe you did it right. And this little baby right here works fine. There's no risk, and no strings attached, Ivy; if you don't like it _after_ you've tried my magic, then there's nothing we can do about it. Hell, I won't even take offence. But you're in pain right now, and I wish for once you'd let me try to help you."

I looked at Ivy looking at the amulet for a long while, silently hoping the scales would tip my way. For the first time, she was trying to get over her phobia, and with all my heart I wanted her to let me give her this small part of me.

_You can't have my blood or my body… but I want you to have this.__ It's mine, and only mine to give, and I want _you_ to have it._

Cold softness brushed against the skin of my fingers before coming to rest hesitatingly atop the small redwood disc. The tiniest of gasps came from Ivy as the intense pain of her wounds receded. The contact was brief, her long, slim finger twitching away as if burned, but she didn't pull them away completely.

I reached tentatively for her hovering hand, her eyes locking with mine the instant I touched her. I smiled softly at her interrogating gaze.

"I promised I'd hold your hand, didn't I?"

I captured her hand between both of mine, the amulet coming in contact with her in full this time. The effect was immediate; all the tension in Ivy's body drained away in the blink of an eye, her shoulders slumping and her eyes closing in relief. Her breathing sagged before returning to its normal, deep and slow rhythm, the difference barely noticeable for someone who didn't know her but glaringly obvious to me.

I kept any kind of smugness, any outwards sign of satisfaction at having convinced her off my face, the memory of our earlier argument, and her "creative" way of winning it, still fresh in my mind. I didn't want to end up moaning on her lap again.

"Better?"

"Yes…" Ivy's eyes were closed, her whole mien subdued, devoid of any trace of her vampiric heritage. I took the opportunity to admire her relaxed, peaceful, beautifully open face, her masks slipping off completely for once to let me fully see the vulnerable flesh and blood woman I knew existed beneath her distant façade. She very nearly took my breath away.

I don't know how long I stayed silent, holding and warming her hand between mine and shamelessly observing her, or even if she was aware I was watching, but the moment of peace came to an end when an odd, yet wonderful tingle started around my hands.

"Rachel? What are you…?" Ivy sounded a little bewildered, her eyes flying open and darting to her hand, the sensation clearly shared between us, but she made no effort to pull it away. The feeling was strengthening, becoming more solid, less like tingles and more like the ebb and flow of a warm wave caressing my skin.

"I don't know. I'm not doing anything."

"It feels like…" Ivy muttered something I barely caught, stopping herself abruptly as if she had almost broken an oath.

"It feels like what?"

"No… don't worry about it; I shouldn't have brought it up."

"Ivy, please, tell me."

She swallowed, uncomfortable with the knowledge she was trying to hold from me.

"When a vampire bites someone, sometimes a part of their aura will go with the blood from the host to the vampire. It mostly happens when there is lo… there are strong feelings between the partners." She paused for a short moment, her voice becoming a little anguished. "Both times when I bit you, a part of your aura came to me. It's called an auratic bond, and I swear, it's harmless… why are you smiling?"

"Because I already knew that. I've known since that first time in Mackinaw."

"You… you knew?" Ivy stammered, her eyes wide in surprise. "And you still wanted me to bite you again anyway?"

"Yeah… I don't know, I guess I thought it brought something… right to the whole blood tryst thing. That's what this feels like? Interesting…"

I closed my eyes, bringing my second sight into focus. The white walls and sterile equipment took on an intimidating red hue, but my hair for once was not shifting at all; apparently, this underground room didn't have an equivalent in the other reality, and therefore I was theoretically just buried alive in the ever-after. As usual, I couldn't see my own aura covering my body, but I could see Ivy's solid, steady brown aura, shot through with silver sparkles. However, it wasn't restraining itself to Ivy's body; a small amount of it was swirling around my wrist and halfway over my forearm, but what was even more incredible was the purifying sensation I felt where the aura covered me.

_The demon smut. Her pure aura is pushing away the demon smut._

When I drew my gaze to Ivy's own wrist, I was even more surprised to see wisps of pure, sunny gold almost basking in the warmth of the vampire's aura. For the first time in nearly a year, I felt _clean_, as if that one sharing of our auras had cleansed me of some of the reality imbalance that coated my soul. I tossed my head back, revelling in the feeling; I knew that as soon as our hands separated, our auras probably would as well, and I'd be back to feeling like a leper.

"I think sharing the amulet is causing us to share auras too, maybe because I made it." I laughed, feeling lighter, purer than I had in a long while. "God, Ivy this is wonderful! I…"

I didn't finish my sentence. Ivy was looking away from me, her free hand raised to her face systematically wiping away the tears that overflowed from her eyes. I had been too wrapped up in the feel of her aura around me to realise the hand I held was trembling.

Seeing her cry brought my mind back to one of the most terrifying moments of my existence, the run back in Mackinaw, during the last minutes of Peter's life. I'd asked the crippled, soon to be reborn, vampire about the transfer of my aura to Ivy, telling him of the significance I saw and the beauty I perceived in the act. What had he said about it already?

"_Would you have allowed Ivy to taste your blood, knowing she took your aura, the light from your soul, along with it?"_

"_Yes! God, Peter, it's beautiful! It brings something right to it."_

"_Ivy is a very lucky woman. Most people don't see it that way."_

_Oh, God…_not only was I everything Ivy wanted in a lover, but I was one of the few who knowingly accepted all that sharing blood entailed, who could _fully_ accept a vampire. And now, she knew what she had all but lost.

"Ivy…" I was completely at a loss for words. Her dreams were shot down in front of my eyes.

"I'm okay… I'm okay." She inhaled deeply, clearly unwilling to let herself cry some more; it sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than me. "You really understood everything. Everything. And yet you still…" She sniffed lightly, making a visible effort to calm and compose herself.

My heart turned to stone and sank in my chest before crumbling to dust and utterly ceasing to exist; I'd finally done it. I'd broken her heart. It had been broken for months now, but she had just become aware of it; I didn't see how my friendship could fill the hole I'd unwittingly blown into her soul.

All of a sudden, feeling clean didn't feel so good anymore; the feeling came from Ivy, and to her it was only a painful reminder of our broken promises.

"Ivy, I'm so sorry…"

She shook her head, sadness, compassion, resolve, a broad spectrum of conflicting emotions warring for dominance on her face.

"It doesn't matter anymore, Rachel. Don't apologise." She tried a smile, but it fell well short of her eyes. "Circumstances, right?"

I knew it was a mistake. I knew I should stay silent until we could both sweep this painful development under the proverbial rug, but my words escaped before I could catch them, hesitant and clumsy but still out there, still wounding to Ivy's already destroyed heart.

"Ivy, you know that I've been thinking about my decision. Maybe we could…"

I didn't think someone could go from soul-rending sorrow to absolute anger in barely a heartbeat. Vamp black eyes fixed on me lightning-quick, capturing my attention in full and practically nailing me to the chair. A blow to the head with a jackhammer couldn't have made me look away from the terrifyingly beautiful dark goddess before me. She was pulling an aura, as strong as she could manage, and wasn't in the slightest sugar-coating her powers for me this time.

"No, we won't share blood again. Not like that. Never like that." Her voice was black ice creeping on my spine, so cold it made the chilly, tomb like atmosphere of the room feel like a warm, sunny beach. She had me completely enthralled, like a snake with a mouse, her anger smothering me mercilessly. "I don't want your _pity_, Rachel. I'd rather you _hate_ me than pity me. I'll take whatever _you _want to give, and to hell with the rest. If that means we're never going to be more than friends, so be it. It's still worlds better than losing you altogether."

My breathing should have been hitching in fear, irregular, but I had unconsciously synced it to hers, my body eerily still, vamp still, my eyes unblinking, just like hers. I mimicked her, completely dominated by the aura she'd pulled on me. If she stopped breathing, I was dead.

She kept her eyes fixed on mine, not to scare (well maybe a little) or bully me but only so I'd see the unwavering strength in them, so that I knew that, even though she let me see her vulnerable side, she wasn't weak. She was a vampire, a strong one both in body and mind, not a whiny little girl, and I was a fool if I ever forgot.

And god, sometimes I did. I didn't know where along the way I had forgotten the reason I had wanted that balance in the first place; to show my complete acceptance of the _vampire_ Ivy Tamwood. Those powers, those instincts, those feelings for me I'd just stepped on, they were all parts of her. The blood balance wasn't supposed to be about just me or her, or it simply wasn't worth having; I deserved this punishment for insulting what she wanted to _share_ with me like this.

Her cold digits slipped from mine, taking both the redwood disc and her enthrallment with them. Her grey voice was much softer when she spoke again, the anger that burned itself out seeming to take with it the worse of her sorrow, leaving her purified.

"I'll deal with it, Rachel. I gave you my word, and I'll keep it. Leaving wouldn't change anything, and I won't do it." She inhaled deeply to center herself, her gaze fixed on one of the neon lights to speed up the contraction of her pupils. She turned to face me, her soft brown eyes meeting my green ones, not completely warm but still open. "Every offer I ever made to you is still open, whether you want to be my friend, my blood partner, my lover… my scion, or any combination of the above. If you truly want to try and find a blood balance with me again, for the both of us, and not just because you're afraid to hurt me or that I'll leave, then come to me. But otherwise, Rachel? Don't cheapen what I feel for you by offering yourself out of pity again."

I nodded weakly, tired and relieved at once; I'd never before taken the full brunt of Ivy's power, and I was in no hurry to repeat the experience. This was one lesson I'd take at heart.

"Good. Are you alright?" She added after a slight pause, concern tinting her voice as she noticed I was wiping tears from my own eyes.

I nodded again; she'd scared the crap out of me, but otherwise left me completely unharmed. I still felt ashamed to have provoked her ire, but I could use the reminder that she wouldn't break every time something didn't go her way; in fact, she usually handled it better than I did when things went wrong, unless, of course, it involved losing control and nearly killing me.

"Do you feel anything else than fatigue?"

"No…" I sniffed quietly, although whether it was Ivy's loss or what she had just put me through that made my voice shake, I didn't know.

"Then you're okay. I didn't mean to be this intense, but…"

"I know you did." I cut her off. "Ivy, I should've thought before speaking. I spat on everything we both want, and I definitely earned that one. You could have done a lot worse than pulling an aura." I buried my face in my arms, exhausted beyond belief. "I'm sorry… for everything."

Two careful fingers slipped beneath my chin, raising my lowered face back towards the light. A warm, understanding look greeted me in Ivy's eyes.

"It wasn't your fault. You didn't ask for what happened on Kisten's boat, Rachel."

"But you…" A feather-light finger came to rest on my lips.

"Shh. I'll deal with it. We'll make it, as long as we take it one day at a time."

The quiet strength and conviction her voice and eyes held soaked into my being; knowing that strength would be there in my life, freely offered for me to tap whenever the need would arise, soothed my fears of the future. One day at a time… That didn't actually sound so bad. Not with her by my side.


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"Well, bite me and slight me! You did it!"

A small container of orange juice, thrown with deadly accuracy, smacked in Ivy's hand, making me jump from my half slumbering state. It was a relief to hear Erica's light-hearted, slightly incredulous voice break the barely comfortable silence that dominated the room; Ivy bottling up her emotions and me recovering from that powerful aura she'd pulled was not fertile ground for conversation. It felt like I'd deepened the chasm between us again; how much more could she take, I had no idea, and hopefully I would never have to find out. Scout's honour, from now on, I would be the greatest roommate/best friend she could hope for… until the next time we slipped up. And then I'd worry over her leaving again, or she would, we'd promise not to do whatever again, ad nauseam…

Damn was I ever getting tired of this. Surely we tried hard enough to earn ourselves a break…?

"What am I, two?" Ivy asked, obviously offended by the cartoon-esque picture adorning the little box she held in hand. In other circumstances, I might have gotten a laugh out of this, but my mood was about as far away from playful as it could get.

"Mentally, sure. Physically, you look about... 40?" Erica teased, which made Ivy snarl in answer. She wasn't in the mood for teasing either, it seemed, but she still drained the box in about two seconds flat, silly drawing be damned. Her love for orange juice was eerie sometimes.

"And you... look tired." Erica said matter-of-factly, turning her attention to me. "She bite you? Yeah, of course she did. All's fair in love and all that, uh? Not even on the neck or wrists either, uh? In a hospital bed? Damn, that's kinky." She smiled and shrugged as my eyebrows rose and I blushed furiously, surprise and embarrassment mixing with my lingering heartache to create one crappy emotional stew. "It's okay, don't look so surprised, I practice too, you know." She had the reason why I looked surprised wrong, though. She was back to her old self, minus the shorter, spiky hair. Her gothic getup was complete with heavy makeup, an overflow of necklaces and full black clothing.

"Uh, no. I mean, we didn't…" Okay, so I was more than a little embarrassed, but hell, how would you feel if your best friend's sister basically thought you had sex in a hospital room?

"One, I don't want the details of your sex life, Erica," Ivy cut me off, the annoyance in her voice telling me she was still ticked about something, maybe the orange juice, "and two, I didn't bite her, she just thought you really had grown a fashion sense. That outfit looked good, why did you have to change?"

"'Cuz I looked like a freaking clone of you, maybe? That look suits you V, but it soo wasn't me. Thank god I brought real clothes to change after work." She declared with a flourish, flipping her smooth black hair over her shoulder with a grace that would make a model from a shampoo ad green with envy. Maybe she was a vaguely scary model wearing excessive mascara, black lipstick, too many chains, and about seven piercings in her left ear alone, but the vamp was just that beautiful; just like her sister, she'd probably look good wearing an orange garbage bag.

"You mean you looked like a sophisticated young woman..." Ivy said sarcastically, her features almost scrunched up in disdain over her sister's attire. "...not like an over-the-top, out of control teenage vamp wannabe…"

"Which I'm not, and which I am… minus the wannabe, of course." She replied, her tone a snide mockery of Ivy's annoyance, her smile showing off her sharpened canines. It was definitely a vampire's smile, sexy and dangerous as hell.

"Remind me why I'm trying to rid you of those manic habits of yours again..." Ivy's eyes narrowed as she took in her sister's teeth. "Please tell me you didn't dump your caps?"

"I didn't dump my caps." Erica answered innocently, the strain to keep a smile off her face so obvious I wasn't sure whether or not she had. It was funny how I hadn't even noticed them until they were gone. Me and my stupid attraction to danger... What can't hurt or thrill me simply isn't worth noticing sometimes. Vamp teeth were both, so they were extra alluring. Yeah, I'm that frigging dumb. Couldn't you tell?

"Rica…"

"I swear, I didn't!" Erica replied, all but laughing now.

Ivy sighed, a look of incredulous weariness on her face. "Suit yourself, I don't care. You know Dad will ground 'til you're thirty if you have."

Erica scoffed, the threat to her social life bouncing off her carefree shell. "You shouldn't worry about ME, V. Worry about yourself. Mom's really gonna let you have it this time. You know how she gets when you get hurt. She really wants to be a grandma someday. I heard her threaten to drag you home once, kicking and screaming if she had to, and lock you up until you're ready to settle down."

The image of their creepy dead vampire mom sitting in a rocking chair, cooing a black haired, ridiculously cute baby Ivy flitted through my mind and was gone, and I smiled a little at the thought. A whacky idea, for sure…

"Right, she can't wait to spoil her grandchildren rotten, I'm sure." Ivy muttered sullenly and I instantly sobered. Children were a touchy subject for the both of us, although were she was concerned, I could really only guess; she was open with me, yes, but mostly with her positive feelings. Joy and happiness, she shared without hesitation. Pain and anguish she kept to herself. "Are they around? Mom and Dad, I mean."

Erica shook her head. "They're not here. The sun's still up, so Mom's probably still trashing everything in sight back home, and Dad's probably trying to keep the final bill under six figures. Be nice, would you, she was really worried!"

"Humph, of course she was…" I didn't catch what Ivy was saying; her words were all starting to slur and blend together. My head felt heavy, unsteady, and my gaze was steadily falling, until I realised I was looking at the base of the hospital bed. I must have dozed off for a moment, because when I caught what the sisters were saying again, Erica was babbling excitedly about her new job as a waitress, and Ivy listened with a small, amused smile. She looked a lot better now that Erica was around.

"Emily is so crazy, V! I mean, Marc soo totally deserved it, treating her like that, but the way she threw that plate! It blew up in a zillion pieces! And the s.o.b. just about had kittens, what with the way she glared at him. I swear, I didn't think a human could scare a vamp like that. If I was him, I'd be careful what I say around the workplace. It's like, he works with his girlfriend but he still acts like a dog with ever other female thing in there. He takes her for granted, he just..." Erica turned around, just in time to see me yawn so deeply I nearly unhinged my jaw. "Whoa, Rache! Any wider and you'll swallow me whole!"

"Shorry…" I yawned again, blinking rapidly to clear the tears that blurred my vision. I wasn't tired, I was dead on my feet, and sore all over; my back hurt from having slept hunched over the bed, my arm hurt where the bullet had grazed me, my heart hurt from having hurt Ivy, my head from the spent adrenaline her aura had made my body produce… I felt like crashing in bed for the rest of the week, or maybe the rest of the decade…

"Hmm, you're more tired than I thought, Rachel... Rica, would you give her a ride back to the church, please? And see if you can't find her car and get it towed? I'll pay you back later."

"Sure." Erica answered without a second's hesitation, already on her feet and hugging her sister warmly, as if no heated words had been said between them in the last hour. I felt a tiny stab of jealousy at seeing such an easy, casual contact between them; it was always a logistic problem for me and Ivy to just be in the same room, let alone touch each other. Ah, in a friendly way, I mean.

"Thanks. You're the best."

"You better know it, if I can put up with you! C'mon, Rache. You're up way past your bedtime."

"Whoa, hey, I'm fine, Ivy. I'll shtay." My voice slurred as I stifled yet another yawn. I was tired, beyond belief, but I didn't want to leave Ivy alone in this mausoleum. "I'll get some coffee and grab a cab later, Erica, it's fine. You can go ahead if you're tired." I rose to my feet, groaning as my stiff body protested against the sudden movement. "Be back in a minute. Do you want some, Ivy? Erica? Anything?"

Neither answered, and the silence made me turn around warily. The sisters were glancing at each other, a silent agreement passing between them before they both turned their attention to me, which was a little scary; getting stared at by two vampires who have something in mind would put anyone on edge. Erica moved a little closer just as Ivy fixed her eyes on mine. They were their usual chocolate brown and looked completely human, but held a glint of mischief I didn't often see in them.

"Would you catch her, please?"

"What?" I didn't understand what Ivy meant until I practically tasted the surge of her pheromones in the air. Their effect was instantaneous; my eyelids turned leaden, much too heavy for me to keep them open and my knees went watery. The room spun as vertigo took me; I'd have landed on my ass if it hadn't been for Erica's arms steadying me. Just like that, Ivy had damn near blood-sugared me.

"Whadd'you do that for?" I cried out the instant the walls, bloody nuisances that they were, stood still and straight again. I was outraged that Ivy could just do that to me, but at least she'd had the decency to make sure I wouldn't fall and break my ass first.

"I hate to say it, but that was a baby's kiss, about as wimpy as pheromones get." The young vampire laughed before Ivy could reply. "Come on, don't be as stubborn as V is. You're dead on your feet, you won't be any kind of company anyw..."

She groaned lightly, her eyes fluttering shut for a second as a tiny shudder rippled over her. It was a familiar phenomena I'd witnessed often in the last two years; the transition every living vampires went through every day when the sun set. It didn't matter that we were underground, the sun still held its sway over them as long as it was up. Now was the time I usually had to be more careful around Ivy; until the sun rose again, her instincts would hold her in a tighter grip and affect her more intensely, her bloodlust especially.

"Besides, Mom's probably on her way over right now. As funny as it could be, it's not a good time for you two to meet." Erica's voice was different in an almost unperceivable way, a new, subtle heat creeping up into it. Her movements were even more fluid now, more feline, more predatory; combined with the gothic outfit, she was really starting to look creepy. She put on edge, and the possibility to finally meet Mrs Tamwood didn't help in any way. That, more than anything else, convinced me to get out of here. I was in no hurry to meet Ivy's mom, especially under such dire circumstances.

No, scratch that. I didn't actually want to meet her. At all.

"Well, if you put it that way..." I glanced at Ivy, finding no resentment in her expression. She looked okay with being alone. "Are you sure you'll be alright?" I asked, wanting to make sure before I left; I felt like enough of a coward already.

"Go." She said with a nod. "You're tired, go get some real sleep. Our dearest mother will be here to keep me in the most charming company for a very long while, don't you worry." She added in a sarcastically sweet tone, earning herself a brief glare from her sister.

"Try not to inflict any permanent damage on each other, okay?" Erica replied, and Ivy snorted in response. "Let's go already, unless you want to meet Mom on the way."

Even with time against me, I hesitated, staying close to the bed. My gaze met Ivy's, silently questioning her; we were still pretending to be involved with each other, for Erica's sake. Shouldn't I be kissing her goodbye?

"Trust me" Ivy mouthed silently has she understood my hesitation. She bit her lip nervously, like a teenager about to get her first kiss, her pleading eyes beckoning me closer. I nodded before leaning over her, my hands resting on her slim shoulders for support. My face was inches from hers when she reached for my shoulder, pulling me closer, the distance between us all but disappearing. She pressed her lips to the corner of my mouth in one of the most chaste kiss I'd ever been given. The contact didn't even come close to making me breathless, yet in a strange way this was more enjoyable because of it. She'd never kissed me before without me being freaked out or moaning from a pheromone-induced rush of sensation, and for once, I could truly appreciate her almost ethereal softness, and just how different it felt from being kissed by a man. Different. Not better, not worse, just... different.

Okay, maybe, _just maybe_, I was starting to understand why Ivy might like this. But that didn't mean anything; it took more than noticing how soft her lips were to make me gay, or even bi, right?

I was startled when Ivy's arm snaked around my waist, my train of thought almost derailed by my surprise. _No way_, I thought, _not twice in a day..._

I feared for a second that she might overstep her bounds and get carried away again, but I relaxed when she angled her mouth for the sensitive skin beneath my ear. Her warm breath became a slow, lingering contact, her caressing lips making me shiver a little, and I closed my eyes, letting myself enjoy the feeling as well as the emotions behind the act. A kiss there was a common display of affection amongst vampires, one that could be steamy as well as simply friendly, and obviously not one that Ivy used often, what with her problems with physical contact. I felt that this one carried every ounce of her devotion, every promise she ever made me. It was heady, really, that so much meaning could be expressed in such a tiny gesture.

"Please don't overthink this, Rachel. I'm not ready to give up, and I won't let you give up either. Not over this." Ivy breathed in my ear, her nose nudging the shell gently, her grey silk voice so soft I was sure even Jenks wouldn't have caught what she was saying. "Don't make me lock you up." I could hear the smile in her voice, and it made me chuckle softly. "Don't laugh, witch, I'm dead serious. I'll lock you up and throw away the key if I have to."

I wrapped my arms around her one last time, bringing her head into the crook of my neck. I didn't know if it had any sort of meaning for a vampire, but to me, it was a gesture of trust, something Ivy craved almost as much as the blood that pulsed slowly beneath my skin, the blood I trusted her not to take. It was too tight, an almost desperate embrace, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted, maybe even needed, Ivy in my life, but our arrangement felt more unfair to her now than it ever did. The feeling that she would snap, sooner rather than later, and leave me was unshakable, no matter how reassuring she tried to sound.

"Take care of yourself, alright?" I whispered around the lump in my throat, earning some points for the steadiness of my voice. I felt more than saw her answering nod.

"You, too. Relax, okay? Don't drive yourself insane."

I stepped away from her towards the tissue box in which I could still hear Jenks' light snoring, and gave it a pair of light taps. A long string of curse that would have made a sailor blush followed by a tearing sound rose almost instantly from within, and a few seconds later, the pixy blew out of the box like a bat out of hell, his sword in hand, the shower of golden dust sifting from him creating a golden sunbeam in the underground.

"Awake! I'm awake! I'm... oh. Hi Rache." With a flourish so fast it was little more than a blur, he returned the sword to its sheath. "Wasup? What did I... miss?" His jaw dropped at the same time his tiny body did, the surprise at seeing the red mark on my neck making him forget to beat his wings. I scrambled to grab him, only succeeding in looking like an idiot as I almost tripped all over myself and he caught himself long before he hit the ground.

"What happen...?" He started saying.

"I'll explain later." I whispered, cutting him off before he could say something that would blow our whole subterfuge out of the water.

"Slept well, Sunshine?" Ivy inquired, more than a hint of sarcasm in her smooth voice.

"Not really. Damn, how can you girls stand this?" He griped, flitting madly across the room to wake his body up. "Nothing smells like anything, it's colder than a fairy Popsicle..." He was startled into silence by Erica's changed appearance. "Tink's little red shoe, how long did I sleep? What time is it?" His eyes darted everywhere, to me, rumpled up and sleepy, with a hickey the size of a small state in a very conspicuous place, to a fairly well rested, alert Ivy.

"'Bout six-thirty p.m." Erica answered, glancing down to the only watch in the room, the one on her wrist. "The sun's gone down."

"Whaaat?!" He shrilled, alarm making his dust shift colours again. "I slept that long? Tink's bordello, Matie's gonna have my balls for dinner..."

"We were just leaving if you want to tag along." I offered, gesturing at Erica, who in turn gestured for me to hurry up. Mama bear would be here soon, and she would be crazy pissed. And hungry...

"But Ivy... crap! I didn't even say hi!"

"Don't worry about it, pixy. No offence. Get out of here. My mother will be annoyance enough; I don't need you around as well."

"Uh. Remind me again why I stayed up all morning worrying sick about you, Tamwood? I'll know better next time you get shot."

I couldn't help but smile, no matter how weary I was. Hearing my two best friends bickering was always enough to make me feel a little better; sure, it could be nasty when they started meaning what they said, but most of the time it was just the way they acted with one another.

"Go already." Ivy said with an exasperated finality no one in their right mind would dare to contest, her hands gesturing towards the door. "All of you, out the door, now."

With a final promise to visit tomorrow and bring her a change of clothes, I finally made my way outside, my mind buzzing with what had happened in the last few hours; the breath stealing, oh-so confusing kiss, the almost-bite and the difficulty saying "no" to her, the blunder that made my small victory with the pain amulet feel hollow... My thoughts flitted in my head like a pixy clan around a jar of honey, so much so that the only reason I realised I'd caught up with Erica was the huge hug she caught me in.

"Erica... can't breathe..." I gasped breathlessly, my arms flailing wildly in the iron grip of the young vampire.

"Oops," she laughed, letting go as casually as she would had she not bruised my ribs. "Sorry, I guess I'm not used to being that strong."

"Yeah... Ow." I winced under my breath, rubbing my sore back. The girl looked frail, but with a little effort, she could probably snap a linebacker across her knees. "You vamps are all crazy, you know that? What the Turn was that about?"

"She didn't tell me you two were together. It's nice to know. V's been spending too much time with Rynn for my tastes recently. I mean, the guy's nice enough, and his book taught me things, but I don't think he makes her really happy." She looked at me pointedly. "I can't believe she didn't tell me. She's been hunting you forever! I thought she'd be happier, you know, gossip a little."

"Well, it's... it's been pretty crazy recently, what with Kisten and Skimmer and her getting... hurt." I scrambled for an excuse, uncomfortable lying to Erica's face. I could only pray to God she didn't have her sister's skill at reading people. "And I think Rynn's been kinda good for Ivy. He helped her a lot after Piscary died." Not that I really liked the guy; I knew he'd help Ivy and make her happy only as long as it was convenient for him. If there was more to gain by hurting and twisting her, there was no doubt in my mind that Ivy would go through hell at his hand. It was just what dead vamps did. I really hated dead vampires.

"Maybe. Like I said, he's nice enough" I didn't think that smile could get any bigger, but it did. "But I'm still loads happier you two found each other. You resisted her longer than anyone else, you know that?" I hung my head, a hint of a blush creeping up on my cheeks. I hadn't given in, but if today was any indication, Ivy wasn't done hunting me either, which was both comforting and discomforting at once; it would be backward to leave if I was still in her crosshairs, right? "Aw, don't be embarrassed; Ivy's liked girls as well as guys as long as I can remember, I'm A-okay with it."

"You really love her, uh?" I asked, hoping to steer the conversation to some more comfortable subject.

"Well, yeah. She's my sister. We're family. It's the same with Mom and Dad. We don't always get along, but we all love each other. Don't you have family?"

I nodded, more at ease talking about them than my supposed love life with Ivy.

"I do, but... I don't talk to my dad, and my brother and I are, well, let's put it gently, estranged. I'm tight with my mom though."

"Your dad? I thought Ivy said your dad was dead?" Erica's eyes widened in horror, her hands clamping down over her mouth as if she'd said something offensive. "Sorry! That came out so wrong, I..."

"No, it's okay. It was over twelve years ago, it's an old hurt really. I'm over it."

"Sorry... isn't he dead?" She asked tentatively, curiosity winning out over tactfulness.

"The man who raised me, the one I called dad, yeah, he's gone. Only, it turns out that he wasn't my biological father."

"So, you know who that is, right?"

"Yeah, I could tell you who it is, but you'd never believe me."

"You could try. You know what my family's like." She said with a roll of her eyes. "I doubt there's anything you could throw at me that I haven't already seen. I'd like to know about yours. Exchange notes about our freaks get-togethers, that kind of things..."

"Can you keep a secret? Not that anyone would believe you if you don't."

"Sure."

"Takata."

"Takata what? You mean... you're bullshitting me." I shook my head, and Erica's jaw dropped, making me snicker. "HE'S YOUR DAD?" She all but screamed. My hand shot to her mouth, clamping it down before she could deafen me some more.

"Think you could be any louder?" I hissed. "I think some people in china haven't quite heard."

"Sorry!" She whispered. "Are you for real? THE Takata's your dad? And you're NOT talking to him? For the love of blood, what is WRONG with you, Rache?"

"It's a long story. We don't really have time, and this isn't the place. I might tell you some other time." I added with a smile before Erica could bury me under her begging.

"You bet your ass you're gonna tell me." Her eyes darkened for a moment, but I could see that her sullen mood was jokingly forced. "I can't believe this. My sister's dating Takata's daughter, and she didn't even bother telling me... I mean, damn, girl, that's cold!"

"Hey, blame her, not me."

"Oh, I will. Don't worry, I will. I hope you're in no hurry to get her back 'cause she's gonna spend a whole lot longer in here once I'm through with her." Her mood did another 180 degree flip, turning her into an overexcited fangirl in the blink of an eye. "So what's Takata like as a dad? Why don't you talk? How'd he meet your..."

Erica and I chattered merrily through most of the elevator ride and the trip to the parking lot, and I was relieved to see that her lighter side wasn't only a façade; she really was just a (vampire) kid, one who liked having fun and could find humour in almost any situation. Her presence reminded me somewhat of Ivy by its intensity, but it was very different as well; Ivy was the calm eye of the storm, a steadying, unalterable force, while Erica felt more like the sun after a particularly long night, a cheerful and lightening presence. They were both very comforting and pleasant though, if you could overlook their predatory nature, but right now, Erica was just what the doctor ordered.

"You mean your brother really thought he could stop you from joining the I.S.? Geez, no wonder you too don't talk to each other. Moron."

"That's a little harsh, you know. You don't even know him." I said defensively, unable to help myself from defending my idiot, overprotective brother, even though my applying to the I.S. was exactly the reason why we weren't on good terms. Long story... "I was really sick as a kid, and Robbie never really got over that."

"So he thought he'd try to talk you out of your dreams instead?"

"Ivy tries to talk me out of things all the time." I pointed out. "Why can't Robbie do it?"

"Sure, she tries, but only when she's absolutely convinced you can't do it, right? And did it ever turn out she was wrong afterwards?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but then thought about it for a second. Ivy had protested against my break-in into Trent's office, and it had ended with my mink ass landing in a rat fight. If not for Nick, who was back then still a rat, a form much more suiting to him than his actual face, I'd have been rodent chow. Ivy didn't want me to talk to Trent during the spree of the Witch Hunter, and Trent had in turn tricked me into taking down Piscary by myself. Again, if not for the help of another, namely Quen, I would have ended up dead, or worse. Whenever I fished a course of action Ivy had been vehemently opposed to out of my memory, I always ended up realising I'd owed my salvation to another or some element neither of us could have been aware of.

"Okay, I guess you're right." I admitted grudgingly, which in turn made Erica grin.

"You wouldn't believe how often that happens."

"Don't get cocky, kid."

"You're only cocky if you can't back it up, old woman."

We stared at each other for a moment before bursting with laughter, which continued on for a while before we reached Erica's car. I didn't know the make and model, but it was a two-seater, and looked sleek and built for speed. It kind of reminded me of Ivy's Nightwing; it inspired just as much confidence... The car was solid black, of course, as opposed to Ivy's purple-striped motorcycle, with tinted windows to protect its owner's sensitive eyes from the sun's glare.

"Uh, you don't drive like Ivy, do you?" I asked, my laughter dying out the instant I slipped pass the passenger side door into the incense smelling interior. A short lance of heartache stabbed through my heart at the reminder of Kisten's scent filling his corvette, but concern for my immediate safety quickly overwhelmed it.

"Nah, don't worry about it." She answered dismissively, but the temporary relief was crushed when she snorted derisively.

"Ivy drives like a little old lady, doesn't she?"

My terrified gulp was drowned out by the revving of the engine. This would be a bumpy ride...


	9. Chapter 8

Author's note: I'm sorry it's taking me so long to upload new stuff, but my life as been steadily kicking my ass lately.

Chapter 8

"Tink's diaphragm, that girl is the craziest of crazies I've ever seen." I could barely hear Jenks' voice over the roar of Erica's car speeding away, but from what I could perceive, he was shaken up. Hell, I couldn't exactly blame him; if my stomach hadn't been empty, the interior of the car would probably have been splattered with an interesting palette of colours. Just thinking about the sheer number of brushes with death we'd had during that twenty minutes trip was enough to make me wobbly. But, in all fairness, something positive had come out of this unpleasant near-death experience. I would never have trouble riding with Ivy ever again; Erica was absolutely right, next to her, her big sister drove like a little old lady. In an electric wheelchair. Without batteries. Uphill. Facing the wind.

_I'm killing the next person who calls _me_ an adrenaline junky. _That's_ an adrenaline junky; next to her, I'm the safest, most boring person in the world._ No wonder Ivy didn't have a problem with my quirks; Erica had probably gotten her used to everything I could throw at her...

"Where'd you think she got her license? The internet? Or maybe the bottom of a cereal box? Or maybe it was her family's money? Yeah, that's got to be it; you lunkers would do anything for money, including giving a driver's license to... to..." Jenks couldn't seem to find a word strong enough to describe Erica as a driver. "And she laughed, Rache! She laughed all the way."

"I know, I was there." And yes, her laughter had chilled me to the bone. Almost ramming an eighteen wheeler was not my idea of fun. "God, Jenks, I thought your daughters were worse? I'm not that shook up." Huge lie there.

"I take it back! I sooooo take it back. I'd rather have all of them crying at once for the rest of my days than ride in her car again! And her swearing! She almost burned my ears off. ME!"

Yes, it had been that bad. Listening to her, you would've thought everyone else was a menace and she wasn't the one happily violating every traffic law ever written. A seaman would have blushed.

"Anyway, I'm never riding with another Tamwood ever again. Later Rache. I'll be out back if you need me. Just give me fifteen before you get in trouble, 'kay? I got some grovelling to do." He actually sounded eager to do it, and I knew why. Pixy grovelling was rated R... The man had fifty-four kids, and one very happy wife.

"Yeah, see you, Jenks. Tell Matalina I said hi for me." I watched as the pixy flew over the church, the golden dust sifting from him making him look like a shooting star against the night sky.

It wasn't that cold, but I wasn't exactly dressed for the weather, still in my tank top as I was, and so my skin broke into goosebumps. I hurried up the stone steps leading up to our front door, the cold, solid oak door meeting my shoulder with almost bruising force as I pushed it open, my eagerness to get in a warmer place making me use more strength than necessary. I slipped past the doors and shut them close, sealing the cold air behind, and let out a contented sigh. As always it was damn good to be home.

The foyer beyond the doors was familiar and comforting, kept in careful order, save for one, unfamiliar plastic bag I almost tripped on. Picking it up, I realised it was an evidence bag, the seal on it broken, one that contained a familiar object, my cherry red splat gun, as well as a slip of paper.

_I thought you might want this back._ Glenn's neat, clean handwriting adorned one side of the bag. _Your payment's inside._ _P.S. Tamwood's out of the woods, no pun intended. You owe me some spaghetti sauce._

_I owe you a lot more than that._ I thought with a wry smile, glad to have that weight off my shoulders; most everything else I could have handled by myself, but not the legal stuff. I just didn't have the political clout.

I pulled the gun from the bag and checked it over, finding it was, at first glance, in working order. It was empty, of course, which meant I'd have to stir a fresh batch of sleepy-time potions. And those I'd loaded hadn't been a day old, either. Bummer...

The check in there was enough to cover this month's rent and have a little left too, which I'd probably put into our common central air fund. Last summer had been hell, and I didn't want to go through heat wave after heat wave again. I twirled the gun once and slipped it into the hem of my leather pants, the cool plastic against my bare skin reminding me again of Ivy's finger exploring the small of my back and creeping up my spine. My scar shot a single spark before I quelled the memory and filed it back in the "embarrassing Ivy moments" folder of my brain. It was getting crowded in there, but I still preferred an embarrassing moment to an "Ivy almost killed me" moment. In comparison, it had been a comfortingly long time since I'd added anything in there.

I couldn't help but sigh, depressed by the thought; she had tried so damn hard to make things work, we both had, and now, it looked like it might have been in vain.

My steps echoed loudly in the empty sanctuary as I made my way through it. The enormous, open area had, hopefully, found its final purpose as a reception area and a second living room late last year, after being a sparring area and an impromptu conservatory for Ivy's piano, as well as the place I settled the organised, seldom used chaos otherwise known as my desk. It was cozy, and the sanctuary brought a feeling of peace I usually enjoyed, but something was missing, and not amongst the furniture. In fact, it wasn't just the sanctuary, the whole church's usual aura of safety felt absent now, which was stupid. Some of Jenks' kids were standing watch near the ceiling, and I knew the whole clan was within shouting distance. The sanctity wasn't a problem anymore either, so what was it? I should have felt ridiculously safe, not edgy... I was probably more shaken than I thought by the day's events. Shock could be a real bitch...

I stepped past my door, stopping just long enough to kick off my booths into my room, a sigh of relief slipping past my lips as I did; these were my favourite vamp-made booths, usually sinfully comfortable, but after wearing them for almost a full day. In my stocking feet I padded into the church's industrial sized kitchen. I had thought I'd be going straight to bed, but I didn't like the insecure feeling creeping up on me. For the first time since I'd moved here, I felt the need to sleep with a loaded gun under my pillow, and to do that, I had to stir a fresh batch of sleep potions, which I was too tired to do without some caffeine.

Without even thinking about it, I walked to the coffee machine, filled it with water and pressed the "on" button. It took me a moment to realise having to change the grounds never even crossed my mind; Ivy always threw out the old ones and had a fresh load of beans ready for whoever would be up first in the morning. It was routine now, but doing it so seamlessly made me realise just how ingrained into my life Ivy had become, not just in moments of crisis but also on a day-to-day basis. It was enough to give me pause.

_Is Ivy's absence really what's bothering me so much?_ No, that couldn't be it. Our comforting routine, that I wouldn't deny meant a lot to me, had been just about blown to hell today, sure, but Ivy had been gone for such a short time. I'd never felt like this when she slept over at one of her "friends"' place, which happened sometimes as often as twice a week.

_But__ then, she isn't sleeping over, she's in a hospital with a hole in her gut, and god knows when she'll come out..._

I shook my head. This didn't make any sense. It was much more likely that I felt a little paranoid because I almost died than because my fanatically loyal vamp best friend-protector was absent for now... right? Right, that made a lot more sense.

I poured a mug of hot, black, heavenly coffee and went to the island counter to gather my ingredients. Herbs, my third largest spell pot, a cutting board and a simple kitchen knife, along with my set of ceramic spoons; I gathered and organised everything at my usual spot facing the garden window. Ivy's antique, solid oak table, carefully organised into her makeshift desk, stood between me and the outside view. Not that there had been that much to look at in the last few months, not since Ivy had bought Jenks and his family new accommodations outside.

A greenhouse. An honest-to-god greenhouse, which she had bought shortly before the first snows and claimed was a selfish, early solstice gift, stating that she had, quote "found Jenks' kids' in her underwear drawer one too many times, and couldn't stand having no privacy for another five months". Yeah, right; having Jenks' family living in the church with us was an exercise in patience, but Ivy had a lot more of that than I did, and I managed. Buying it must have taken a pretty hefty chunk out of her finances, and let's just say that her cold, distant image took a massive pounding that night she had the thing installed.

We both knew the reason why she had bought the large structure that pretty much obstructed the view of the yard now; the fact that Jenks and his wife were both nearing the end of their lives drove her as insane as much as myself, and she was taking steps towards helping them survive winter. With Matalina getting sicker and sicker during summer, it was only a matter of time before she went and Jenks followed. The greenhouse offered them the best climate possible as well as fresh food, even in the dead of winter, as well as ideal conditions for them to spend the coming months. They improved their chances of surviving, and me and Ivy could get our privacy back from their brood. Everybody wins.

My herbs cut and ready, I gathered them, pushing away from the island counter towards the gas stove I used for spells. The kitchen was a "do it yourself" witch's dream, with two ovens, so I didn't have to cook and spell at the same space, more counter space than I knew what to do with and everything I needed to prep dry ingredients.

The dry stifling of pixy wings made me look up from my spell preparation.

"Hey, Rache! Still up? I thought you'd be heading straight for bed, what's cookin'?"

"Oh, hey Jenks. Just some sleepy-time potions. I wanted to load this" I pulled the splat gun out of the waist band of my pants and placed it next to the oven, "before going to bed, that's all."

"Shaken up? Or do you miss Ivy already?" He asked.

"Not that bad, just..." I hesitated for a moment. "Wait a sec, I'm not..." I turned to face Jenks, and was almost blinded by the radiance of his smile. He was looking squarely at my neck.

_I'm so__ going to slap Ivy upside the head for this one..._ This damn hickey was a bottomless source of embarrassment, it seemed.

"Is there any chance you'll laugh it off and leave me alone, Jenks?" I groaned, turning away from him to hide the blush I felt creeping up on my face, my hand raising to cover the angry red mark. I'd been dreading this; as great a friend as Jenks could be, his potential to be a pain in the ass was reversely proportional to his size.

"Laugh it off!?" He shrilled, making me do a double take. "Tinks knocks your knickers, Rache, I'm glad. Heck, I'm super glad! What's stronger than glad? Ecstatic? Yeah, that's it, I'm ecstatic. It's about time you let things move forward."

"What?" Okay, this I hadn't expected...

"Okay, it's kinda sad that Ivy had to get shot for you to realise you love her, but crap, Rache, it's better than you passing up on it altogether, uh?"

"Jenks, I don't think you understand what really happened..."

"Whaat?" He drawled, smiling and winking knowingly. "So she got a little carried away. It's not like she bit you. Damn, she's come a long way, a few months ago, that would have been a bite mark."

"Jenks..." He looked happy, proud even. Damn it all to hell, he looked so happy thinking that Ivy and I were finally together, and I had to take that away from him. I could pretend with Erica, but not with him.

"Jenks, yes, you're right, she's come a long way, and yeah, she... kissed me, but... but I didn't ask for it."

I wish I could take it back as soon as those words crossed my lips. I averted my eyes, unable to bear looking at him, the disappointment on his face was just so raw.

"I had a nightmare about her. A bad one." I explained, still unable to look at him. "When I woke up, I was so relieved that she was okay and..." I sighed, unsure whether to tell him or not about our argument. "I hugged her, and one thing led to another and before I knew it, she was kissing me." There. I said it. It wasn't even that far from the truth. Lies of omission, that's all.

"So you two..." He trailed off.

"She was high on painkillers at the time, so we're okay, but we're not, you know, together now or anything."

"Okay..." There was a moment of awkward silence, only broken by the sound of boiling water. I added the herbs and stirred with jerky, nervous motions. Ten bucks said that this wasn't over yet...

"Hum, Rache, I know this isn't really any of my business, but how's your blood balance coming along?"

There it was, the question I dreaded the most, although I had honestly thought that Ivy would be the one to let the cat out of the bag, not me. I silently hated myself for thinking she would do that; we had _both_ agreed to keep this tidbit of information between us.

"It's not..." I couldn't, I wouldn't lie to him, but dammit, just saying those words hurt. I had to swallow the lump in my throat to force the words out. "I won't do it, Jenks. I won't share blood with her again. I can't." _Why does saying this hurt so damn much?_

Jenks looked like he just received bad news he'd been expecting. He nodded once before sitting, arms and legs crossed, on the counter, muttering something that sounded like "should've known".

"Well, this whole stinking, purple fairy crap of a mess just makes a lot more sense now, doesn't it? No wonder Ivy's been so miserable these last few months..." He looked up at me, his leaf green eyes almost empty. It was so dead wrong to see him like this. "Why, Rache?"

"Jenks, I..." What could I say?

"What's changed, Rache? Please, just tell me! She's tried so damn hard to fix herself for you and now that she's ready, you're telling me you won't do it?! Why?"

"Jenks, what we do or don't do together is none of your business! I... She's okay with it." Or at least she had been, until she realised I was really all she ever wanted all her life and she just about lost me. I set the cow-shaped kitchen timer to fifteen minutes, and feeling the need to sit down, slumped into one of Ivy's chairs.

"She won't leave over this... She won't." I whispered, burying my face in my arms. There was barely any room for me to do so on the antique table. Ivy had just about claimed all the space for her impromptu desk. Just has I had claimed the island counter for myself. We lived together still, but we shared less now than we had in more than a year. Damn it all to hell.

"Why don't you want to share blood with her again, Rachel?" "Rachel". Damn, he was really bothered.

"Because... Because for thirty seconds of my life, I thought I'd been bound, Jenks. I want to let her bite me, but for just a moment I thought I'd been bound to Kisten's killer, and those thirty seconds have been the most frightening of my life." I felt tears stinging in my eyes, and blinked rapidly so they wouldn't spill. "I can't risk this again, Jenks."

"What?! But Ivy... Ivy would never do that to you! Crap on my daisies, the woman just took a bullet for you! How much proof do you need?!" He flitted over to me, his dust an angry red color. "She loves you enough to throw away her own soul, and you damn well know she's scared shitless of losing it! She would rather die than make you her shadow, and you won't trust her with this?!"

"She asked to bind me once, remember!?" I shouted back at him, anger feeling better, or maybe not as bad, than heartache. "Some part of her wants me to be her plaything, and I can't risk it!"

There was a moment of silent, choking tension. A look of incredulousness joined the anger scrunching up Jenks' youthful face.

"I can't believe this!" He scoffed bitterly. "It was Piscary who pushed her into trying to bind you, and because of what he made her do, you won't trust her? It was her love for you that gave her the strength to break free from him!"

"You don't know what happened between us, bug!" It was like my words broke through a dam in my heart. Hot tears burned down my cheeks, tears of anger and loss, over what Ivy and I could have been.

"Shit." I swore softly, wiping the moisture away. "You have no idea what happened between me and Ivy, Jenks."

"Of course I don't, you stupid-ass witch!" His words were still harsh, but he sounded considerably softer now. "You didn't talk to me! Son of a fairy whore, Rache, I thought we were all past your bloody issues with trust."

"It wasn't any of your business, dammit." I said half-heartedly. It hurt too much to fight him.

"None of my business, eh? Just look at yourself for a second, would you? You're a mess. And Ivy's been miserable for months now. You two are family, and what makes you guys hurt this bad is damn well my business!"

I looked up at Jenks. He was striking his best Peter Pan pose, hands on his hips and head held high, a picture of righteous anger and strength. That he was four inches tall didn't lessen the impact in any way.

"What do you want me to say?" I whispered, defeated.

"You could start with everything, and we'll go from there." He suggested with a sad smile.

So I did. Everything that happened, the merging of Ivy's and my aura, the fear, our agreement not to do it again but still stay together, the kiss in her hospital room and my subsequent blunder; I told him everything. I felt a weight lifting off my chest with every word I spoke. He was right. I should have talked to him. He was more than a sometimes annoying partner and backup, he was a friend, one of the best a girl could ask for.

"So now you know." I said finally after an exhausting length of time. The timer rang, and I rose to continue my spell prep. The familiar motions were comforting next to the uncertain future looming over me. The sound of Jenks' soft chuckling made me glance back at the table. He was lying on his back, his dragonfly wings spread beneath him.

"Oh, Rache, you're so totally in love with Ivy..." He snickered.

"What? No, I'm n... Why would you say that, I'm not! Wh..."

"Come on, now. You eat drug lords for breakfast, master vamps for lunch and take a stroll in the Ever After for dinner with your demon friends. You can say no to the lure of Ivy's bite, you're maybe the strongest, at the very least the second strongest lunker I've ever met, and you're still afraid that you'd say "yes" if Ivy asked to bind you. You're afraid of what you might do out of love for her!" He looked almost giddy.

I was frozen for a short while before I could answer.

"Jenks, that doesn't even make sense! I'm not..." The smell of burned, messed-up magic made me look back at the boiling, roving mass of fluids in front of me.

"Crap on toast, look what you made me do!" Could this day turn any worse? Don't answer that...

I scrambled for the box of salt I kept in a nearby cupboard and poured a massive amount into the spell pot. Rule one of earth magic; when in doubt, salt and start over. I'd have to scrub the damn thing over for half of forever before I could use it again, but at least I wouldn't knock myself out with a spell misfire.

Angry at the whole world, I loudly dumped the whole mess into the sink. Ivy would have had a fit over me crapping up our kitchen like that, but hell, Ivy wasn't here, so I took advantage. When the cat is away, the mice come to play. Who says I'm not a hardcore optimist?

"You're wrong, Jenks." I muttered, hunched over Ivy's usual "count to ten before you rip Rachel's head off" spot.

"No, you're just an idiot." He answered, smug. "Hell, you've both been the definition of moronic ever since you started gearing your relationship towards something more."

"Uh?"

"Just answer this one, as honestly as you can, 'kay?" He said, and I nodded hesitatingly. "If Ivy had been a guy, do you honestly believe you two wouldn't be married by now? Honestly?"

My mouth hung. Closed. Hung open again. Not a word came out.

"Exactly. You're passing up on what could be the damn best relationship you had in a long while, just because she's not a guy and it makes you uncomfortable to find out if it's an issue or not. Crap, Rache, you and Ivy complete each other so well, you're like soulmates –if you believe in this sort of crap. But you're not even willing to try going all the way even once with her."

"Jenks, it's not that simple. We could lose everything if we do it and it turns out I'm not..." I choked. Couldn't say the "G" word yet.

"And that's why Ivy's an idiot. She wants you to jump into her bed without giving you a chance to dip your toe first. She's treating you like just another one night stand, even though she hates it." He shot me a pointed look. "Well, at least she's got the excuse that it's all she really knows. You don't want to try at all, and she wants you to pick the whole package right now." He smiled and shrugged. "Go slow. I swear, it's like neither of you has ever heard of dating. Maybe spend a few nights together, without sex, see if you're not just irrationally afraid of her morning head."

Against all odds, that made me snort. Ivy was really that scary in the morning. Jenks looked happy to have made me smile, but he quickly sobered up.

"Rache, I know you don't want to hear it, but you're already losing everything you built with her, just slowly. If you won't even give her a chance to get what she needs from you, then you can't blame her if one day she just leaves."

"Oh, how nice. Now it's emotional blackmail. Sleep with her, offer her my blood, or she leaves, uh? Well I can't live like that, Mr I-Know-What-you-Feel-Better-Than-You-Do!" I spat bitterly. He was dead wrong there, though. Ivy wouldn't accept what I gave her unless I truly wanted her to have it. To even suggest we be like that would anger her.

"It's not blackmail, Rache, it's cause and effect. It hurts her to stay with you, but it gives her something, too. So far, whatever that is outweighs the pain, but someday, it might not be enough anymore. Don't get me wrong, Ivy'll fight tooth and nail to stay with you, and you know it, but she can't always think of you first."

I hung my head, ashamed that I kept lashing out at him, especially when he had nothing but noble intentions, but dammit, I was too tired for soul searching tonight.

"I'm afraid Jenks." I finally admitted. "I don't want to lose her, but I don't know how to keep her and keep on living."

"They don't have to be mutually exclusive. I know you're afraid you might not like being intimate with her, but did you ever stop to think that you might? How happy you could be with Ivy?"

"Maybe." I answered softly, then shook my head. "It doesn't change anything, Jenks. I won't sleep with her, and I won't share blood. I can't. I've got too much to lose."

"Still afraid that you might end up bound to her? I can help with that." He rose and darted to me. "You have my most solemn vow, Rachel, that if Ivy ever binds you, I'll kill her. Twice, and thoroughly." I was shocked, by the violence of his words, yes, but mostly by the calm in his voice.

"How can you even say that?!" I uttered, outraged. "She's your friend, too!"

"Simple." He said matter-of-factly, as if discussing the weather and not murder. "If she ever betrays you like that, it will mean I misjudged her and that she is no friend of mine, or yours for that matter. I wouldn't shed a tear on her grave, and neither should you. But you know deep down that Ivy isn't like that."

I understood what he meant; trust and loyalty were the most important values to a pixy, and betrayal the deadliest offence of all. No wonder he'd been upset when he learned I wouldn't share blood with Ivy; in a way, I didn't trust her with this.

"Will you try again?" He asked simply. "I know you guys can do this. You love each other enough, even if it scares you."

"When did you get so supportive?" I snarled bitingly. "Last I checked, you were pretty opposed to us finding a blood balance."

"Last _I_ checked, Rache, Ivy wasn't ready. Tinks' little red shoe, you have a nice selective memory, don't ya, witch? I told you finding a blood balance would be hard, but that ultimately, it would be the only way you two would stay together and not kill each other, remember?"

I remembered. And knowing he had my back, like always, made me feel a lot more confident, although I also felt a little ashamed. We were talking about my best friend's lives and ending them both here. I shouldn't be feeling more secure, but here I was. Go figure...

"Will you?"

"Jenks..." I sighed, distressed by the hopeful look on his face. "I'll talk to her about it when she gets back, but I'm not sleeping with her, period?"

"Not right away, anyway. Could you just consider giving her a chance? She not trying to make either of you miserable, you know. She's trying hard to be happy, and I'm pretty sure she'll do her damn best to make you happy, too."

"Jenks..."

"Okay, okay, I get it, you're tired. 'Night, Rache."

"'Night." I vaguely muttered as he flung himself to the window, only to pop back in half a second later.

"Oh, and Rache? Ivy's the only one who gets to call me "bug", got it?"

He was out of sight in a heartbeat, leaving me alone in the kitchen. I silently padded out into the hallway, leaving behind a room that stank of burned magic and came to a halt before my own room and Ivy's. Remembering that she had asked me to bring her a change of clothes, I took the last steps separating me from her door and entered.

Ivy's room was just about the furthest thing you could get from a vampire's den. Soft tones of pastel, pale, solid wood furniture, thick curtains, neatly ordered... it was a true reflection into the depths of it's owner's soul. It was her sanctum, and I couldn't help but feel I was trespassing, even though I was here doing her a favour. As far as I knew, she never brought any of her multiple partners here, save for Skimmer, the only one besides myself, and maybe Rynn and David, that she had any true feelings for. Only the bed looked like it might belong to a vampire with Ivy's appetites, a broad king size covered in dark silk and satin.

But my favourite part of her room was definitely her "shrine", a portion of her wall covered in countless pictures relating happier times of her life. At the foot of the wall, she had placed a small table holding a few items probably worth more to her than the contents of her bank account; a picture of her and Kisten at fourteen, rosy cheeked and wearing skiing gear, the urns that held our late lover's ashes, another picture, this one of me and Jenks, with the Mackinaw bridge in the background, and finally, her sword, carefully resting on its stand. She used to hide the damn thing under her bed, since it had been a "gift" from Piscary, a weapon she could use as she served as his enforcer. She had long hated the blade, but that changed when Jenks made it her solstice gift.

Under his careful guidance, he and his sons had made the weapon into a beautiful work of art. The once-plain grip now had pixy-fine patterns woven into it, and the cross guard had been sculpted into a masterpiece of intertwining gold and silver. The old sheath was engraved with a complex design and polished to a glossy shine, and the blade itself was now covered in a layer of the finest pixy steel, causing it to have an iridescent sheen.

According to Jenks, it was now a traditional "father's sword", the symbol of a pixy clan. It was forged by the founder and stayed with the clan as long as it existed, wielded only in times of great perils. It was never to spill blood, unless it was too protect. In a way, he had made a statement by giving Ivy this sword, that she was no longer that woman who accomplished God knows how many awful deeds for her master, but a protector willing to give her life for those she loved, just like a pixy father should. I think that was the only reason she didn't throw it out when she received it. Well, that and having it evaluated and figuring out that it was now worth about as much as the church and all the grounds we occupied; pixy art that size isn't exactly found in troves. What with her aversion to violence, despite her obvious, out of this world skill in inflicting it, she wasn't exactly bursting with joy when I handed it to her on Jenks' behalf, but now she treasured it.

Me, Jenks and Ivy... yes, they were family. I may not agree with everything Jenks had said, but this much was true. I wanted to keep them with me, I wanted Ivy to bite me, and I knew she would probably agree to the threat of death to get a chance to do it again. I had a lifeline now, an ugly one, but maybe Ivy and I could make it work that way, as the very dysfunctional, loving family we were.

Maybe all I needed was an excuse to try again... or maybe Jenks had been right all along and I wanted all she offered and denied it.

Without thinking about it, I slumped onto Ivy's bed. The soft coverlet let out a cloud of her scent, both comforting and painful at once. It smelled so good in here, and I breathed in the vampire incense. Long ago, I had a flash of me and Ivy sharing this room, of us together, but actually sitting on her bed didn't trigger anything. I was almost disappointed...

My eyes felt so heavy, and I was so tired... before I knew it, my head was resting atop her pillow, the clean scent of her citrus shampoo mixing wonderfully with the scent of vampire.

Why couldn't I get a simple answer? Something like burning letters spelling "straight", "gay" or "bi" on my forehead, or anything else so perfectly obvious even I couldn't screw it up?

_Just resting for a moment, nothing more_, I thought as I finally lost the struggle to keep my eyes open, the scents wrapped around me lulling me to slumber.

I had been asleep for a paltry few minutes when the ringing of the phone jarred me awake. I scrambled up, leaving Ivy's incense-filled room behind in a rush, and caught the phone on the third ring.

"Vampiric Charms runner service, this is Rachel speaking." I said in the most professional tone I could manage under the circumstances.

"Would you call me a chauvinist knight wannabe again if I told you I've been worried?" A sardonic male voice spoke from the other end of the line, making me smile.

"Hi, Marshall."


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

_How could this turn out so wrong?_ I wondered for the umpteenth time this evening as another wave of insidious cold crashed silently into my worn out body.

That was all I felt; nothing but emptiness and a cold that had nothing to do with temperature; in fact, the unfamiliar bedroom I laid in was quite warm with shared body heat. I could still feel the sheen of sweat cooling over my naked body, making the sheets cling to me in a strangely oppressive manner. It didn't make sense. I shouldn't, I couldn't be feeling this bad.

_What the hell went wrong? It was a nice date. It was a nice kiss. Sex wasn't bad, either, but this just feels so completely... wrong_. A strong arm was wrapped around my middle, but it did nothing to chase away the creeping knowledge that I had made a horrible, irreparable mistake.

"What's wrong?" Marshall asked when I shivered against him, his lips meeting my naked shoulder in what should have been a comforting, pleasant gesture of affection, but made me feel absolutely nothing.

_Wrong, wrong, wrong..._

"Nothing. I'm fine." I lied softly, hoping he'd mistake the shivers rippling over my skin for pleasure instead of the cold dread spreading through my limbs. His lips travelled towards my neck now, and soon touched my silent demon scar. Not a twinge came from it, and my heart lurched at the reminder that no pheromones were influencing me, that Marshall wasn't a vamp. Wounds I thought had already healed started aching dully. Dammit, would I ever recover from Kisten's death? Marshall wasn't Kist. He couldn't fill the hole in my heart were Kist used to be.

_Or maybe... just maybe he isn't another vamp_. I considered as a flash of hurt, almond shaped brown eyes bolted through my mind and was gone.

Ivy... God, she would be so pissed off when she learned about this. Worry about her reaction gnawed at me like a hungry animal, something that had happened before but never like this. If there is one thing I'm used to, it's telling myself that I can't live my life according to what can or can't hurt her, but I had apparently gone soft somewhere in the last months.

But even worse than fearing Ivy's unavoidable anger, I realised the damn vamp had at least been partly right; I had used Marshall to stave off my loneliness, although whether or not I had done so because of my supposed denial towards her or not remained to be seen. The reason why was moot; I just had to look back at the last week to see, plain as day, how I simply had.

We'd all but spent it together, Marshall and me. The church had felt so empty without Ivy in it that every reason had been a good one if it meant leaving it. That's how it started, with him inviting me to work out with him. It was nice, really; ever since Nick dumped me, I hadn't had anyone to run with. Asides from sparring, which had been pretty one-sided as well, working out with Ivy had always been out, since I couldn't keep up with her vamp speed and her stamina, so it was great to finally have someone to break up this usually lonely part of my routine. Swimming with him was harmless, innocent, fun, and a great way to exercise. He had a thing for Speedos, too, a great fringe benefit, or so I thought at the time.

Working out in the morning, lunch and friendly dates in the evening, long and lonely nights in front of the TV in my empty church; that was pretty much my routine for the week and a half Ivy had been in the hospital. She had to be absent for me to realise just how her presence filled our home; Ivy was usually as quiet as a mouse, but were there used to be comfortable silence was only an emptiness that grated on me now. I missed her, I wouldn't deny that much, and I visited her, of course, but I could only do so for the brief span of time between her awakening, near sunset, and her mother's arrival. That was my only window, since her mom usually spent most of the night, and Ivy was too tired for visits during the day.

Ivy had become sick because of the vamp virus in her becoming active when her heart stopped. Amongst other, somewhat "unpleasant" things (don't look at me, that's all she would say), the disease made her internal clock tick almost exactly the same way as a dead vampire's, meaning she slept all day instead of only half of it. Since I didn't have the gut to face her dead mom, especially after Erica probably ran her mouth about Ivy and me being together to the whole Tamwood-Randall estate, I usually left pretty quickly.

That left me with a whole lot of time to spend with Marshall, time I had, up to this evening, spent working on a completely platonic relationship. I should've known Marshall had something in mind; for starters, we had gone out at midnight, much later than we had all week, or ever for that matter; that he made time to get himself into my Inderlander schedule should have tipped me off. Then there was the "diner, show, drinks" combo he had taken me on; it was in a different league than our usual walks, TV dates and movies and other, non-romantic dates we had.

Yes, in hindsight, it was beyond me that I could have been surprised when he kissed after I walked him from my car to his doorstep. His intent should have been clear from the beginning.

_Don't blame him. You responded. You thought you wanted this_, my ever so helpful conscience piped in. I knew it was the truth, but dammit, it didn't make sense. Why wouldn't I want him? Marshall was nice, cute, funny... He was a witch, too. We had loads in common. He liked me, and he could make me happy. Maybe he could even have accepted my demonic heritage. I didn't even owe anything to anyone.

So why did I feel like I'd just cheated on someone for accepting this?

Quietly hating myself, I pulled away from him and out of the bed, unable to stand this anymore. His hands lingering on my shoulder slid against my back, between my shoulder blades, a spot where I usually loved being touched. By now, I wasn't expecting to feel anything but worse, and I wasn't disappointed.

"Rachel, what's going on?" Marshall asked, making me glance up from my search for my discarded underwear. He was pranced up on his elbow, his eyes fixed on me genuinely concerned. His leanly muscled body was barely covered from the waist down, a sight that should have been more than a little distracting, but that I felt too crappy to enjoy.

"Nothing, I..." Standing in the middle of the bedroom, still in my birthday suit, I hung my head, my frizzy hair creating a red curtain that hid from me the pained comprehension dawning on the other witch's face. _Suck it up_, I berated myself. _You screwed up; you owe him a little honesty_. "Marshall, I'm sorry. This was a mistake."

"A mistake? What?" I didn't answer, scrambling through the motions of slipping into my panties and jeans, still naked from the waist up, wondering where the hell my bra had landed. Anything I could do to keep my mind off the pain I was about to cause him sounded good.

"Rachel, would you please hold still for a second and tell me what's wrong?" Marshall asked, his voice equal parts annoyance and concern. I couldn't do as he asked; stopping and thinking about what I did didn't sound pleasant at all. Moving around gathering my discarded clothes sounded a lot better in comparison.

Giving up on my bra, which was pretty useless with my sad excuse for a chest anyway, I found my socks and my dark red blouse. It wasn't until I buttoned the shirt so high that I looked downright prude that I could finally scrape enough confidence to meet Marshall's eyes again.

"Did I do something wrong?" He asked, his voice honest and concerned. "Did I hurt you?"

"No..." Try as I might, I couldn't force more words out. I couldn't understand what I felt, let alone voice it.

"Is it about your old boyfriend?" Out of the mouth of just about anyone else, his words might have sounded judgemental, but Marshall was made of better stuff than that. He was really concerned about me. It was probably a big reason why I felt so crummy about using him right there. "Are you still hurting over him?"

"Yes... no. God, Marshall, I don't know. I just don't. You're a great guy. But I..." I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, bracing myself for the pain to come. Marshall was silent as we stared into each other's eyes, both of us trying to figure out what the other was thinking. He looked confused, and more than a little sad, and I guess I didn't look much better.

"Is it about Ivy?" He asked finally, his body loosing all tension and slumping onto the tousled bed. He kept his eyes fixed at the ceiling, obviously trying to avoid looking at me.

"Maybe it is," I answered softly, biting back the reflexive the denial that wanted to gush out, "but not the way you think."

He snorted in bitter laughter, an ugly sound that made me wish I wasn't on the receiving end of it.

"I'm not blind, Rachel. I know the woman hates my gut, even though she barely knows me." He turned his head to fix his eyes on me. "Only a jealous ex or a vamp would hate me like that. She's in love with you, isn't she?"

"Yes." I admitted with some difficulty. "Yes, she is."

"What about you?"

"I'm... it's complicat-"

"Dammit, Rachel," he all but shouted, making me jump, "if you're going to run away right after we made love, I think I deserve to know why, at least!"

"I don't know what the hell I feel, okay?!" I snapped back, my temper getting the bett of me. Maybe I was in the wrong, but when someone pushes me, I push back. "You try doubting your sexual preferences, see if you like it! I told you, I'm sorry, okay?!" _Breath in, one two, breathe out, one, two, three_. "I really am, Marshall." I said in a calmer tone. Honest. My voice barely shook. "I meant it when I said you're a nice guy. This would never have happened if Ivy hadn't been hurt. I used you to fill the void she left, and I'll say it again, I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is." _One deep breath. Come on, this has to be said_. "I'm not in love with you. I thought I might be because I didn't feel as bad with you around, but I see it know, I'm not. You're a great friend, but that's it."

_Can't we just be friends... now where have I heard that one before_? Gazing into Marshall's face, I had a sinking feeling that this wouldn't be enough anymore. I felt on a losing streak, friendship-wise; first Ivy, now him. Thank goodness I hadn't done anything to piss Jenks off again. I don't think I could've handled it if he was pissed at me, too.

"Do you want me to call you tomorrow?" I asked mildly, still clinging to one tiny shred of hope that I could patch this up. Marshall actually had to think about it, which hurt more than I cared to admit. Even if I didn't share his feelings, he was still a friend. I didn't have many to spare

"I'll call you. Maybe." He answered in a carefully neutral voice. "I have to think about this, Rachel."

I swallowed softly before I turned and exited his bedroom, muttering a vague "fair enough" over my shoulder as I did, and quietly shut the door behind me. I gathered my coat and slipped into my boots, the scent of leather reminding me again of my two favourite vampires. I doubt it was anatomically possible for my heart to be as high in my throat as it felt, but hey, go tell it that. With the way things were going lately, it would likely take up permanent residence up there.

I fished my keys out of my bag and slipped into the cold interior of my convertible, taking a moment to bang my head against the steering wheel, glare at a staring passerby, and bang my head against the poor wheel again. How could I have been so dumb? Hadn't I taken a vow to make smart decisions somewhere back?

_Well, that does it. As soon as Ivy comes home, we're both sitting down and figuring this out once and for all._ It was one thing to frustrate and confuse myself, it was another entirely to hurt people I cared about. As scary as it was, there were just too many hints that I cared more about her than I let myself see.

I had just put the key in the ignition when my cell rang.

"Yeah?" I barked sullenly on the third ring, after I frantically searched my purse and scattered most of its content.

"Rachel?" A deep male voice answered

"Oh, hey Glenn. What's up?" I amended, pushing my angst and frustrations to the back of my thoughts.

"Rachel, listen to me." Glenn commanded, his business-like tone sending me directly into runner mode. "I don't know how much time to speak to you."

"What's going o..." I begun, but he promptly cut me off.

"I said, listen! They're watching me pretty closely."

"Glenn, I have no idea what you're talking about. Who's watching you?"

"I.A. They're investigating me. Hell, we're both under FIB investigation, and I was forbidden to talk to you about it, but they're wrong not to warn you."

"What the hell could FIB internal affair have against you? Christ, Glenn, you could be the FIB poster boy! And what the hell did I do this time?" I asked, outraged. I hadn't done anything wrong... recently, at least. Not that I remembered...

A frustrated grunt/sigh came from the other side, then a tense silence, like he'd covered up or hid the receptor. Whatever was happening, wherever he was, he was in trouble.

_Cool off, Rachel_, I thought. "Okay, Glenn, listen to me. Start at the beginning. Why are you being investigated?"

He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, sounded a little more collected. "The evidence from the case against the brimstone dealer is gone. The gun, the bullets, they're gone. I.A. believes it was an inside job."

"And they suspect you? You're the straightest cop I've ever seen! Why would they..." I thought about it for a second. "Because you gave me back my splat gun... you broke the chain of evidence when you gave it back to me, didn't you?"

Glenn grunted in acknowledgement.

"You must have known you could get in trouble. Why did you do it, Glenn?"

"Something didn't add up with yours and Tamwood's statements. There wasn't anyone else at the scene, no third guy, not even evidence of there ever being anyone else. Worse, she claims she only took out the one guy, the buyer. If there was someone there, they knew what they were doing." He paused. "Rachel, this might have been a trap. I don't know if it was meant for you or not, but you crossed some powerful people. I thought this case would be in the bag anyway, so I had your gun released. I didn't want you unarmed. "

"Wait, just when did you talk to Ivy? The gun was already there when I got... home... Crap, while I was asleep? You didn't think you could wake me up, tell me about it?" And Ivy hadn't told me either! Then again, we both had other things on our mind by then...

"She said you needed the sleep. Heck, even in a hospital bed, I wouldn't mess with her."

Well, at least he'd learned his lesson. The first time the two met, Ivy almost bit him and he pulled a gun on her. Memories, memories; life was so simple back then, wasn't it?

"Okay, so that's you. What did I do?"

"I told you, your two statements don't match. It's both of you. Some idiot higher up thinks that makes you two suspicious. It doesn't matter that I know you aren't involved, no matter how loud I shout, they don't hear me. This is over my or captain Edden's head; we can't make this go away. They'll have to come up empty on their own."

I rubbed my temples, trying to stave the pounding headache I felt coming along. "Okay, so someone got ahold of everything they could tie to our mystery shooter. What about that other guy I arrested for you?"

"He's still in holding, but he's no use to us. He got hit with a spell, I think. The last thing he remembers is being stood up by his prom date. No idea how it happened either."

"A memory charm..." Damn, not just any memory charm, either, if it could hit someone that hard. That meant clout, either financially or magically.

"Who was he tied to, Glenn? Who was his boss?" I asked quietly, already suspecting the answer. Tons of cash, friends everywhere, always there to make my life hell, more slippery than a frog in a rainstorm, it could only be our friendly neighbourhood elf councilman, Trent Kalamack. And if he was the one responsible for getting Ivy hurt, then the gloves were off. I'd land his ass in jail quicker than he could say spit, no matter what it took.

"Don't." Glenn warned.

"You know this reeks of him, Glenn." Neither of us needed to name Trent to know what I was thinking. "I know it's him. We've been grabbing his small fishes for two months now, and he finally decided to off me. Oh, I'll get him this time."

"Rachel, I know you're upset about Ivy, but kicking down Kalamack's door won't get her back, it'll only land your butt in lockup. Think. What happened when you arrested the dealer was brutal, but ultimately sloppy. Not Kalamack's usual speed at all. For all you know, this was the west coast cartel trying to muscle its way around here again, and you two just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

I hmm-ed noncommittally, unconvinced, but kept listening.

"Whoever took the evidence and spelled our guy in custody," Glenn went on, "his work was as perfect as that other job last year with Kalamack's prints. I'm sure it was the same man. I don't think Kalamack did it to help the other guys as much as gain some blackmail material on them. It's obvious that the two events are linked, but I doubt they were pulled off by the same people."

My mouth worked wordlessly as I tried to undo his logic, and swore inwardly when I realised he was right -kinda. Much as I hated to admit it, if Trent wanted to kill me, it would definitely be clean and relatively painless. No mess for the big man, no sir. I was almost disappointed to check him off the list of suspects –a part of me had wished he would give me a reason. In the years since I'd left the IS, I'd met most of the worst of this city's underbelly, and none caused more moral dilemmas than Trent. Some days, I thought the good he did would never outweigh the bad, others I wasn't sure if he wasn't simply misguided. I wish I could firmly file him under "bad guy" in my brain, but I couldn't anymore without making myself a freaking hypocrite. Just were has my moral compass gone, I have no idea. It took a hike around the same time as my sexual certainties.

I shoved those thoughts away fast, glad that Glenn couldn't see me blush. Now wasn't the time to think about this. I knew Trent knew Lee Saladan, the west coast representative in Cinci, that they were childhood friends. The guy was one sick puppy if I ever saw one. Maybe Trent planned to blackmail him, or maybe it was just a misguided attempt to help him. Like I said, Trent could be both ruthless and not.

"Fine, I'll give councilman Kalamack the benefit of the doubt," I spat his title like an insult. He might not have tried to kill me this time, but he was still a corrupt official, and I could hate him for that, if nothing else. So I didn't have an excuse to finally tag him. So what? I wanted Saladan in jail pretty bad, too. A slow burning of anger started building in me. Stanley "Lee" Saladan... yes, he could have done it, definitely. I suppose saving his sorry ass from a demon didn't buy me much gratitude from the prick. So, maybe I had sold him to said demon to save myself. He almost did the exact same thing to me. Fair is fair. Perhaps it was time we had a friendly chat.

"I hear a "but" here, Rachel. If you know who might be behind that trap, tell me."

"This is personal, Glenn. No offense, but his ass is grass." I savagely twisted the key in the ignition, bringing the car's engine to life with a satisfying roar. I twisted the knob on the heater more out of habit than any real need. My anger was more than enough to keep me warm. I almost disconnected the call right there, but Glenn's shouting voice stopped my thumb just short of the "off" button.

"Listen to me, goddammit! You're already knee deep in trouble, you don't need to make it worse!"

I paused, my thumb still hovering over the button as I debated just ignoring him or not, then brought the phone back to my ear.

"Thirty seconds." I said coldly.

"Don't give me that. Rachel, I know you're angry, but don't be stupid. Give me a name if you have one. I promise I'll get you a warrant. The west coast cartel makes Kalamack look like a complete pussycat. Remember that wave of brimstone-related deaths two years ago? That was all them, even though there was no gain to it at all. These guys are plain vanilla evil."

If it wasn't for the stellar evening I was having, I could have laughed in the irony of it. "Yeah, I know. I almost landed their leader in jail on insurance fraud. A real choir boy." And boy, would he hear choirs once I was through with him.

"Then you know you don't want to mess with these guys without the law on your side. I want a name, Rachel, now." He demanded. "Once I have something solid on him, you can beat him down and drag him downtown to your heart's content."

I hesitated for a moment. If I chose to cooperate with the police, I couldn't settle this just any way; I'd have to wait for him to come up with something incriminating enough to get a warrant. Even after so many brushes with death, my first impulse was to tell Glenn to shove it and charge headfirst into the bad guy's lair. The more I thought about it, the more Saladan made sense, the more convinced I was that he was responsible for hurting Ivy and the angrier I got. I was ready to head down there in all my righteous anger and play judge, jury and executioner. But I didn't listen to my first impulses, not anymore. Saladan was dangerous. Like, "Ivy bad hair day" dangerous. And vicious enough to make a rabid were look positively cuddly in comparison. And did I mention he was powerful? Sure, I was a much more powerful witch now than I was the last time I'd faced him, but it was entirely possible he could still make me eat my teeth. I could get killed if I went after him unprepared, and I couldn't pretend it was all about me anymore; many people would be hurt if I was. My mom, Jenks, Ceri, Keasley...

And Ivy... It was really thinking about her that pushed me to do the right thing. I couldn't leave her alone, not after she'd fought so hard to stay with me. I'd already caused her so much pain, and I likely would again soon, but I couldn't, I wouldn't add grief over burying me to the list.

"You didn't hear this from me, but if you look up Stanley Saladan, you might find some interesting things." I surrendered finally. "You make damn sure you get him, understood?"

"Thank you." Glenn sighed, relieved. "If he did it, we'll get him, Rachel. You have my word." His voice lowered in pitch, and he whispered, "Damn, gotta go. Keep your nose clean, all right?"

"Yeah, okay..." I muttered vaguely and ended the call. Lee. I guess we would settle our scores soon. I knew Glenn was a good cop. He'd find Lee, whom I realised just then realised I had no idea where to find.

_Great going_, I thought, _there you are, all ready to storm the castle, but you have no clue where the castle is_.

Depressed, I took a tally of the evening, counting off crappy things off of my fingers. _So I managed to get a friend angry at me by sleeping with him, which will probably get another friend mad in the near future, oh and on a sidebar, I have another death threat looming over my head._ Even for me, this was a pretty productive night, trouble-wise. Nice to see these good resolutions I'd taken had not dulled my unmistakable touch.

I drove around a while, heading back to my empty church holding roughly the same appeal as sticking a finger in my eye. I knew what I really felt like doing. An urge to go see Ivy possessed me, almost badly enough to risk getting acquainted with her mom –I mean, surely it would be gross for her to bite her daughter's girlfriend, right? The worse she could do was probably pull an aura and be a disapproving mom... with long teeth... and enough strength to bench-press a bus.

Gulp.

But honestly, since I was probably covered in Marshall's scent, seeing Ivy was out. She would immediately figure what had happened between us, and call me a coward if you want, but I wanted to put that off as long as I could.

Yeah, facing the evil-murderous-stunted-demon-overlord, without any kind of preparation, weapon or plan –not even a little scary. Facing my roommate and telling her I had sex with someone who wasn't standing in her shoes –very scary. Hey, I never said I was consistent.

But more than everything else, I was afraid she would get out off the hospital before she was ready and start tearing up the city's underworld searching for Lee. Knowing her, she would, without a second's hesitation, and in the shape she was in, she might end up biting the big one. So the church it was.

The Hollows were lively on my way back, the night still fairly young for the partying crowd, and worse, the sky was clear and alight with the huge round orb of the full moon. Several times I had to swerve to avoid moonlighting Weres. I don't have anything against Weres on most days, but the full moon seemed to bring out the racist in me, turning polite "get off the road" into a shouted "get the hell off the road, you fucking mutt!" accompanied by lots of honking. At least I was driving, and not Erica...

I managed to get to the church without killing anyone, or myself, my mind still buzzing with leftover anger and confusion. I guess it took Lee that long to consolidate his power here, that probably explained why he hadn't made an attempt on my life sooner. Ungrateful son of a bitch. I helped rescue him, and this was how he repaid me? At least Trent had the decency to leave me alone after I'd saved him... okay, yeah, he tried to kill me too, but he didn't carefully lay a trap for me, he just throttled me and banged my head against a headstone, which, despite its name, was not meant for this particular purpose. Still, his was a passionate act, not a premeditated one. Lee had wanted me dead in a degrading, humiliating and painful way. Nailing him in turn would be sooooo good.

I was halfway up the stone steps when I remembered I'd had the doors barred behind me by Jenks' kids. Annoyed at my own paranoia, I strode down the frozen steps, too lost in my thoughts of vengeance to really notice the car parked right in front of our porch. I pushed the garden door into the snow-covered garden and made my way to our seldom-used backdoor. I entered the kitchen quietly, realising once I was in that habit had me almost sneak in, just like I used to after a night with Kisten. Repressed guilt at its finest...

_No, don't think about that. Think angry thoughts, and cross that bridge when you get there_, I thought a second before I heard voices coming from the sanctuary. Two things hit me in rapid succession from there.

One was that Ivy was back home.

The other was that Skimmer, her semi-psychotic ex-girlfriend had somehow gotten herself out of jail.

Swell. Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed, does it?

A.N. : That took me forever, and I'm sorry. I'll have more time to devote to writing in the next few months, so updates should no longer be so few and far between


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

How does a deer caught in the headlight feel when it's about to become a semi-permanent fixture on the bumper of a big-ass SUV? Probably like a witch caught sneaking into her own home after having sex to find her lethally jealous vampire roommate waiting to rip her a new one. I froze, my stillness almost rivalling a vamp's, not daring to move a muscle. I barely breathed, afraid to give myself away

Panicky, who, me? Naaaaah... I just felt like researching time travel spells all of a sudden. You know, just to make sure I wouldn't end up causing another Turn one of these days.

Still, standing there, rooted in place and scared half to death, in my own kitchen, of all places, surrounded by the scent of freshly brewed coffee and evidence of diner for two, I wondered if there was a god for stupid people like me. After all, it was lucky I'd barred the door before leaving, or else I might have come in the front door and barged in on them. And from the sound of them, I knew it would have ended poorly for me if I had.

See, I'd been mistaken; they weren't in the sanctuary at all. They were in the living room, much closer. I'd only thought they were in the sanctuary because of the volume of their voices was so high; I'd thought it inconceivable that they could be so loud without the echo of the sanctuary to boost the loudness. But no, they didn't need it, since they were screaming. Even better, they were fighting. I couldn't believe my ears, but they were actually fighting. Both of them, as in, Skimmer was actually yelling back at Ivy. This had to be a sign of the apocalypse. Seriously, you tell me it's raining frogs outside or that Skimmer is yelling at Ivy, I'd believe the former over the latter. It's that unheard of. As far as Ivy is concerned, Skimmer is always sugar and spice and everything nice. Everyone else who laid eyes on her precious got the vicious badger, with an extra dose of bitchiness made extra special for little old me, but she was submissive to Ivy, in a manipulative, mind twisting sort of way. Whatever they were fighting about, it had to be bad. And they were apparently too caught up in it to have noticed me yet, or to care if they had. Whether that was good for me or not was still up for debate...

In the truest tradition of Rachel Morgan lame decision-making, I didn't high-tail it out of the church as quietly as I could. What the hell, I was done for anyway. Ivy would unavoidably smell Marshall's scent I'd dragged in even if I ran. I might as well figure out why they were fighting. Anything that pulls Ivy away from Skimmer is a good thing in my book. I didn't mind getting some more ammo against her.

What can I say, I hate the woman's gut. I don't know every little detail, but I do know that Skimmer was responsible for sending Ivy deeper into the pit of ugliness she spent years dragging herself out of. I hate her and her mind games, and yes, I hate that she monopolises Ivy's attention at times, even if she is Ivy's official girlfriend and her one steady "romantic" –you have idea how I loathe using that word to speak of Skimmer- involvement.

I inched closer to the fray like one of those heroines from a spy movie, my steps silent enough that I couldn't hear them, thanks to my vamp-made boots more than my unparalleled talent at discretion. Not wanting to push my luck, which I should've known by now was just about the worst you could have, I only crept close enough to make out what they were saying.

"You want to talk about stupid, love?" That was Ivy talking, and the way she said it didn't make it sound like love. At all. Even from outside the room, the pure rage in her voice made the hair at the back of my neck stand up. "Have you even spoken Nathalie yet? You shouldn't still be here, Skimmer. You're master-less. Fair game."

Nathalie... The name didn't really ring a bell, but I vaguely remembered Ivy mentioning it the first time Skimmer and I met. She'd asked about Skimmer leaving Nathalie's side, and why she had given up her positon. Now, it sounded like she was Skimmer's old master vampire, but what did I know? Well, I knew there was a chance that she would leave Cincinnati. The prospect of Skimmer heading back to California, out of my life and away from Ivy was almost enough to brighten up my evening.

"You want me gone, is that it? Because I'm fine, Ivy! I don't have to crawl back to her. You'll need to do better than that to get rid of me."

"You're not fine. You're in danger, for Christ sake! You think a living vamp of your calibre can stay under the radar forever? You need protection."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll put in a good word for me with your great new master." Jealousy and scorn were thick in Skimmer's voice, something that I, for once, agreed with... er, the scorn part I mean. Neither of us was fond of Ivy's closeness to Rynn Cormel, though I doubt it had much to do with the fact he was a dead vamp who couldn't love Ivy in her case, and all to do with plain old jealousy, and maybe a little disgust for his gender. She didn't share her lover's flexibility; girls and girls only for her, thank you very much.

"He won't..." Ivy let out a long sigh, and lowered her voice. I had to strain to understand what she was saying. "Skimmer, I talked to him already. Whatever you think, I'm not trying to get rid of you, Rynn simply won't take you in. My hands are tied. Nathalie is the only one who might-"

"Nathalie gave me up, Ivy, or have you forgotten that? She bartered me away like I was just another piece of meat to her!" The tone of her voice shocked me to hell and back. Was she in pain? Even weirder, in honest pain? Skimmer? Jesus... Could she have actually _loved _that woman? Was that love haunting her still?

"Not willingly. She was backed in a corner." Ivy answered in her softest, most compassionate voice, the one she usually kept for my downs. Maybe it was petty, but I felt a little jealous that she would let her softer side show for someone else.

Okay, it was petty as all hell. Sue me.

"You know she will want you back. You used to be her favourite. You're part of her bloodline; it'll mean something to her." Ivy continued in that most wonderful voice. "Please, I'm begging you, talk to her."

"If you're trying to get rid of me, Ivy, just say it, don't hide behind my ex! I'm a big girl, I can- humph!...mmm"

She was abruptly cut off. Soft, pleasure-filled sounds rose, accompanied by breathless moaning, and I stopped trying too hard to hear. They were kissing, and at least one of them was enjoying it wayyy too much. My face all but caught on fire at some of the louder sounds they made. Suddenly, I actually felt like I was eavesdropping.

"I missed you." Ivy sighed, low, silky, delighted and oh-so painfully honest. "God, I missed you so much." She repeated, her voice cut off periodically by the sound of lips meeting lips. "How can you even say that I _want _you to go back? Heavens help me, I don't, but we don't have a choice. It's not safe for you to stay in Cinci. Sooner or later you'll be hurt, and I won't allow it."

"Well, if you really feel that way," Skimmer purred breathily after the longest ten seconds of my life, "there is another solution."

Ivy hmm-ed, soft and a little dreamy, in response, the sound muffled, as if she were talking while her mouth was busy doing something else, like, say, muzzling Skimmer's neck or ear. Eww. I tried my best not to visualise, but it was too late. The image was instantly burned into my mind, to haunt me forever in all its revolting glory. It wasn't the thought of two women kissing, it was that _Ivy _was kissing _Skimmer_, really kissing her, and so obviously liking it. _My _Ivy was... er, no, wait that came out wrong. I mean, the woman who had tried to fix herself so hard for me, so that she could find real beauty in her vampiric needs, was now kissing that sex-crazed harpy and liking it. _That _was what I hated, that's all. Yeah...

"Move in with me."

Honestly, I wasn't truly angry up until Skimmer said that. Frustrated that she would try to pull Ivy back into her old lifestyle, yes, but those four tiny, simple words were what really set my blood boiling, hitting me in turn with the approximate gentleness of an out-of-control bulldozer. Sure, the rational part of my brain told me that she was entitled to ask –Skimmer was after all Ivy's girlfriend, even though I'd hoped prison would put the "ex" to that title- but the rest of me was angry and outraged with a violence that shocked me. So if she couldn't get me away from Ivy, she would try to lure her away from me? How dare she?

"What? Skimmer, I can't." Ivy protested, her voice still thick and heated from whatever Skimmer was now doing to her.

"Why not? It's the best solution, Ivy." She pleaded, coaxing, the sound of sliding clothes and soft, half-hearted protests telling me she was touching Ivy, and Ivy liked it, maybe despite herself. "No one will risk crossing you to get at me. You get to stay with me and keep me safe. It's a win-win."

The air carried a dense tendril of vamp pheromones into me, making my eyes widen and forcing me to clamp my hands over my mouth to stifle the pleasured moan that wanted out, the skin of my arms breaking out in gooseflesh. I missed being angry all of a sudden. It's embarrassing, but what can I say? The average-at-best sex with Marshall had not done much to satisfy me, and the frustration was making me a little sensitive to the truckload of pheromones their foreplay made them produce. Kisten's fault that, not Ivy's. With me, Ivy had always held back a little, out of respect, to keep the more sexual aspects of warming up and playing on my scar to a minimum, unlike Kisten, who used it in our bedroom play. What the girls were doing in our living room was not a far cry from that, and they were both vampires, plus, Ivy alone was more, much more powerful than Kisten. Add Skimmer's abilities in the mix, although I didn't quite know where she stood on the power scale, and the fact that neither of them was refraining in the slightest now, and that made me a (hopefully) silent, and definitely squirming, third partner in their little game.

Long story short, quite in spite of myself, of the anger at my... well "rival", for lack of a better term, I was embarrassingly getting turned on. Swell...

Skimmer spoke softly, too low for me to hear, but a sharp intake of breath, followed by sucking sounds and an abrupt spike of chemically induced desire and pleasure, intense enough to draw my skin tight, told me better than words that someone had just been bitten. I squirmed some more, deeply uncomfortable listening in on them. This was fast becoming voyeurism, but I couldn't bring myself to get away. It took all I had just to keep my hand from my scar, so I doubted I could move without alerting them (read "sprawling myself all over the floor because my knees were getting watery."). I had to press my back against the wall just to steady myself.

"God, Sweets, you taste so good." Skimmer moaned after the longest thirty seconds of my life (I know, I know, I just said that, but it was the night for record-breaking). "Can you imagine, having this every day, whenever you want?" She crooned, her voice becoming low and throaty, until I could almost hear the lustful smile in the sound alone.

"Skimmer... more." Ivy slurred blissfully in response. I could see her with painful clarity in my mind, her head tossed back, black eyes half-lidded and glazed over in the ecstasy of her lover's bite, Skimmer latched to her offered neck like the gigantic blond leech she was. A fresh wave of revulsion came over me, both at the image her voice invoked and my own morbid fascination. I desperately didn't want to hear them if they decided to get more sweaty together. The possibility made revulsion turn into true nausea, and I promptly shoved those thoughts into the farthest reaches of my consciousness, locked the door and threw away the key before I gave myself away in a most unflattering manner, namely by having my diner take a one-way trip north. I couldn't imagine anyone getting off on this sort of thing without a super-sensitive scar that resonated from their pheromones. Whatever voyeurs got out of doing what they did, I didn't get it from listening in on their making-out. Did I?

_No way. You're not enjoying this_, I told myself, for the most part believing it. _Pheromones talking, that's all_. Yeah, that's right, in your face, shaky knees.

"Hmm, it's your turn now, lover. Oh, poor thing, you're so hungry you're shaking... I'm sorry, I should have taken care of you sooner."

"Skimmer I..." Her breathing was hard enough for me to make it out distinctly, but she sounded hesitant, almost reluctant. Was she afraid to hurt her lover with her hunger? That would be a first; mindless satiation was pretty much the name of the game for them. The only thing I appreciated about Skimmer was that she didn't mind if Ivy hurt her. "You smell so good. So good..."

"Mmm, nice to see you haven't lost your touch while I was aw- oh! Eager, too, I see." She giggled. "Mmm, naughty. Don't stop."

"I want it..." Ivy said raggedly, "give it to me. I need it..."

"Shh, No need to beg tonight, lover. Take it." Her tone went from soothing to something more heated, more playful. "Oh, don't you dare move your hand. You know, I don't have anywhere to be if you want to drink from somewhere else." She laughed, the sound swirling around me, travelling up and down my spine, caressing me like lusciously warm fur until I had to fight the urge to try and shake her laughter off me. With the pheromones in the air, it felt too much like she was actually touching me. More eww.

_That's it, I'm out of here_, I thought. I didn't care anymore if they heard me or not. Getting my head chewed by Ivy was one kind of scary. Hearing Skimmer have an orgasm was in another league altogether. I didn't need that sound waking me up in sweat for the rest of my days, the laugh alone was bad enough. I was almost in motion for a second, but I stopped and listened. Nothing. I couldn't hear anything at all, even though they're should have been more of those passion-filled moans, more of Skimmer's dirty cooing. I frightfully whipped my head back towards the living room, half-expecting to see an outraged Ivy glaring, enraged, at me standing in the hall, but no. There was nothing, no angry vampire, not a sound, not even a puff of breath. After I'd stretched my hearing as far as it could go for such a length of time, the silence was deafening, and a little unnerving.

_What's taking her so long? And why the hell do I care?_

"Sweets, don't keep me waiting like that... no one likes a tease." Skimmer whined, arousal thick in her voice, mirroring my thoughts in a way. Ivy's muttered answer was too soft for me to hear, but I thought I detected an apologetic note in it.

I stopped. I couldn't understand what Ivy was saying, but could it be that she was saying no to Skimmer? Why would she? Hadn't she initiated this? She probably hadn't taken a drop of blood in over a week, probably the longest she'd gone hungry since she started practicing again; she shouldn't have been able to let Skimmer have first bite, let alone keep her teeth out of her neck altogether. Something was up...

"Sweets, it's all right." She groaned anxiously, "Don't be silly, you're too hungry to think straight. Go ahead. Sink in. You know you want to." The last was low enough to be a purr, but I could tell that the mood was breaking fast. The intoxicating cloud produced by the two aroused vampires was already fading, and I breathed in relief as the tingling started to diminish throughout my body and my hands and knees steadied.

_Let's not do that again_, I thought, vowing silently to leave voyeurism and eavesdropping to perverts and maniacs in the future. Yet as unpleasant as it had been to have Skimmer's ghostly hands travel over my body, a part of me was in exultation. A dark joy swelled in my chest as I thought of Ivy's reluctance to drink from her lover, quickly followed by a little guilt over Ivy's imminent heartbreak, but the thought of what her refusal meant, what it would do to their twisted relationship if she refused to share blood, won out. It spelled doom for them. A break up was simply unavoidable. Being overjoyed to finally and truly put Skimmer's girlfriend status to the "ex" was definitely the stronger feeling of the two. It might hurt Ivy in the short term, but in the long run it was for the best if she never took another drop of blood or shared her bed with that blond sociopath.

"I can't. Damn it all to hell, I can't..." Ivy whispered, angry and bitter. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

They were silent for a long moment, but it was anything but calm. The sexual tension that had filled the room just seconds ago was being replaced with something dark and threatening

"More of your non-practising nonsense, lover?" Skimmer asked disdainfully. "Is that why you won't drink from me? Trying to stop altogether again?"

"Don't be like that, Skimmer, please." Ivy pleaded in response. "That's not what-"

"Or is it that you would rather take someone else? Am I not good enough for you anymore, Ivy? No one but the little witch is worth your bite?"

"Leave Rachel out of this, it has nothing to do with her." She snapped, instantly defensive. It was probably a lie, too.

"Oh, you think so." Her sarcastic laugh made me cringe; it about as nice a sound as nails scratching on a blackboard. "Ever since I moved here, the bitch has done nothing but stand between us! I'm so sick of putting up with it!"

"Where are you going?!"

"Oh, not far, don't worry. I just want to ask her if she enjoyed our little show..."

_Oh, shit_...

I tried to get away. I really did. I scrambled to get away from the living room like a kid about to get caught with his hand in the cookie jar, almost tripping as I did, but with a swirl of white, blue, blond and black, Skimmer materialised in front of me.

"Aw, why leave so soon? I thought you were enjoying yourself there..." She smiled, showing me perfect white teeth and wickedly sharp canines, her voice sweet enough to be fattening, yet vitriolic enough to melt the paint off the walls. Her eyes, already impressively dilated, bled away the last of the blue, leaving only bottomless, angry pits of hellfire where eyes should have been. If looks could kill, this one would've blown me through the seven circles of Hell and straight onto the Devil's lap.

In all fairness, despite the anger on her face, the woman looked good, especially considering she'd just spent several months in jail. Her hair wasn't quite as long as I remembered, but it was still enviably straight and the same beautiful honey blond. Her features were as fine boned as ever, her eyes were still huge and long lashed, graced by elegant, thin eyebrows. Her legs still went on for miles, covered only from a third of her thigh up by a midnight blue skirt. A pure white blouse, tousled, undoubtedly by Ivy, and unbuttoned enough to show a generous amount of olive cleavage, as well as her favourite cream coloured boots completed the outfit.

Honestly, if you look at Skimmer and me side-by-side, knowing that she's Ivy's usual standards for dating, you have every right to be confused. My skin is pristine thanks to demon magic, but it's still the same pasty white as it was before, albeit it's now freckle-less. Her fine jaw and high cheekbones make my face look positively Neanderthal in comparison, and, well, the rest of me can't really compete with the body she got from her carefully bred vampire lineage. The only features I have that can compete are my leg, which are almost as long and slim as hers, but where she looked like a frigging ballerina, I just looked gawky and awkward, excuse me for being a mere mortal. And yet, in spite of all that, I was still the one who held the lion's share of Ivy's heart, which probably accounted for the murderous rage in her eyes.

Yes, I managed to think about all of that while she was glaring murderously at me. The damn vamp looked that good.

"You should have told me you were bored with us, little witch, I would have included you. Who knows, you might have stirred Ivy a little more." Her mouth bowed into a perfect little pout, sexy enough to make anything even remotely attracted to her gender melt into a puddle on the floor. Did not feeling anything at all make me straight? I don't think so. It's hard to feel attraction when you're shaking in your boots.

_Wait, when did she start scaring me?_ I'd kicked her to the curb once before. I was fairly confident I could take her down if need be... and if I was in my normal shape, and not reeling from the vampire equivalent of a peep show in pheromone vision, I would have already.

"Skimmer, don't do anything stupid..." I warned her, hating the quaver that crept into my voice. "You know how it ended the last time."

"Oh, am I scaring you now, Rachel?" The smile she gave me would have made a shark flinch. Okay, maybe not a shark. Definitely a grizzly bear, though. "Come here. I'll comfort you..." Her voice smouldered, the heat washing over my still shaky body, and it was all the warning I got. She took a step forward, her hand reaching for me, I took an instinctive one backwards, my cool instantly lost to those huge black eyes, and before I knew what was going on, she was pressed at my back, the circle of her arms pinning mine at my sides.

"What the..." I uttered loudly. "Get the hell off me, now!" I punctuated each word with random, useless jerks. Even if Skimmer lacked the training Ivy had, she could still toss me across the room with only her pinkie finger. Shaking off a vampire, even an untrained one, requires more technique than simply trashing about, else you will do little more than arouse them. Predators don't like it when they don't get to wrestle with their prey, and struggling was really all I could do. I didn't have a clear enough head for any of the moves that could help me.

"Oh, be like that, please." She purred delightedly, her chest vibrating in time with her words. As if to prove my point, her nipples pressed again my back puckered into stiff little peaks that dug into my skin. Gross. I really needed a shower now...

"What do you think you're doing?!" Ivy shouted from behind us, her grey silk voice raw with anger and her barely repressed instincts.

"Ivy!" I shouted, momentarily relieved when Skimmer twirled us both to face her and I caught sight of the raven-haired vampire. Ivy's face was a mask of pain and conflict; it obviously tore at her to see Skimmer holding me like that and contemplate what she would have to do to get her off. "Get her off me before I blast her off!"

"Aw, you wouldn't do that to me, now, would you?" She whispered in my ear, her warm breath angled carefully to spill over my scar. I had to desperately hold on to the shredded remnants of clarity I had left just to stay on my feet, it felt so good. In a totally repulsive manner, of course. "We could have so much fun together, the three of us. Wouldn't you like that?"

"Blow me." I grunted through gritted teeth, trying in vain to slam the back of my head into her face. She was quicker than I remembered and easily avoided me. Well, if my physical abilities weren't enough, it was time for something a little more drastic. "Last chance not to end up as a stain on the wall."

"Promises, promises..." She blew me off, her tone totally unconcerned as she stifled my struggling and brought our bodies together again. The bitch I'd kicked, and only had to kick once, into submission was now blowing me off as if I was merely playing, and it made me raving mad. Determined to teach her a lesson about messing with a witch, I sent my mind in search of a line, easily finding and touching the one in our backyard. The energy was warm and familiar when it poured into me, chasing down the alien feel of an aroused female vamp pressed against me. I channelled the energy into the center of my being, and braced against the surge of power I would use to blast her into next week. Bu-bye, Skimmer.

"I'd say it was nice knowing you, but we both know how truthful that would be."

"Now, now, enough of that." She chastised playfully, and her nuzzling mouth found my scar. How could she have known? That trick always worked against vamps. My last thought before the energy burned harmlessly out of chi was how unfair it was that she could just play with me with total impunity. I was the runner, the professional, dammit, and she was... well, Skimmer. Pretty, blond, smart, snarkier than a high school's worth of teenage girls, but ultimately harmless. The tightening of my stomach, the embarrassing perkiness of my own nipples, and those colors I had no name for dancing in front of my eyes all pointed to a different conclusion, though.

I underestimated her. God, I underestimated her. So. Frigging. Bad. It hardly seemed to matter if she didn't have Ivy's training and skill and couldn't take me in a stand up fight. With all the pheromones she pumped into me, she might as well be a walking-talking chemical weapons plant. My poor, abused knees finally buckled, forcing Skimmer to press me closer to herself to support my weight, which was still barely an effort for her vampiric strength.

"There, isn't that better?" She laughed, trailing her fingers from my ear to my collarbone in a delirious little path that made my breath catch. I could put up about as much resistance to her sensual assault as an overcooked noodle. She was moulded against my back now, her warmth wrapping around me oppressively, her grip no longer painfully tight; it just didn't need to be anymore, I couldn't will my body to want to fight.

"F-f-fuck you." I spat, verbal resistance the only kind I could offer, earning myself a giggle and her lips on my neck again, where they promptly tore to shreds what little composure I'd managed to scrap together, making me limp and pliable in her arms again. Cold sweat trickled down my neck and my back, my scent rapidly mingling with hers, and I knew I would be in trouble if it drove her into a fever pitch. "Ivy, get her off me, please!" I begged as Skimmer started leaning me further against her, my head lolling backwards against her shoulder, exposing my neck. I hated it, but good God, Skimmer had me against the ropes. She might have only wanted to scare me in the beginning, and boy, had she ever succeeded, but I feared her instincts were starting to take her over, and I really didn't want a bite from her. I'd seen what happened when a vampire's instincts mixed with strong emotions, and the result wasn't pretty. Who knows if in her state of mind, she wouldn't bind me to her out of spite? The thought of being a slave to her insatiable thirst for blood and sex was nightmarish. Of course, Ivy would probably kill Skimmer if she dared to draw blood, twice if she bound me, but I didn't want to force her to murder someone for me again, especially not someone she's been in love with for the past thirteen years.

"Skimmer." Ivy growled warningly, her voice colder and harder than steel. "Let her go."

"Oh, why so greedy, Sweets? If drinking from her was so mind-blowing my blood won't do anymore, why not share? I want to know what's so spectacular about her. I'll just take sip, scout's honour."

"Now."

"I mean, I don't smell anything special about her..." She said, proving her point by burrowing her face into my shoulder and inhaling deeply. "Just a plain old... witch?" She hesitated, taking in another breath of my scent, and I knew she could discern Marshall's scent on me. "Or is it "witches", hmm? Oh, Rachel." She murmured, too low for even Ivy's ears. "Who needs friends when you have enemies like you...? You just delivered Ivy to me on a silver platter." She ran her hand fondly through my hair, her mouth trailing a slow line of nipping kisses along my jaw. Eww to the nth degree...

"Last chance, Skimmer..." Ivy tensed, and I knew it was anything but a hollow threat. Ivy didn't do hollow threats. Her hands balled into fists, and even if her anger wasn't directed at me, I still felt a shudder of fear run through me when her aura washed over our entwined bodies. Skimmer shuddered as well, but she was so deep into "sexy-scary vampire mode" that she hardly seemed to care, or maybe the sick little bitch was just enjoying it, and she projected her own hunting aura in response.

Their respective powers connected, making the air between them charge and crackle with the clash of energy. Despite my predicaments, I wished I could be focused enough to will my second sight into focus and see their hunting auras clash with one another. What I couldn't see, however, I could definitely feel. Ivy's aura was a cold, focused thing, hard and honed like a blade, and left a bitter taste of fear coating my mouth. Skimmer's power was soft and velveteen, it caressed whatever it touched, bending rather than breaking, insidious, yet warm and relaxing, like a mix of blood and honey. They completed each other so well that despite my earlier revulsion, I caught myself thinking they were beautiful, both of them.

More pheromones talking. Never you mind.

They were at a stalemate too, neither of them capable of overthrowing the other through the use of their powers alone. It dawned on me that this was about dominance, that Ivy was trying to get her lover to back down by reasserting her dominance over her. I had always assumed that Skimmer was submissive by nature, and Ivy dominant, but I realised I was wrong. They were both dominant, only Ivy must have come out on top somewhere along their past. Skimmer had been happy to play the submissive so far, but touching me, someone Ivy had claimed for herself, even if it was in name only, was a direct challenge. She was using me to provoke Ivy. Huh. Well, an academic distinction really. I'd still be just as dead if she ripped out my throat trying to get a reaction from Ivy as I would if she just plain old wanted to kill me.

"Or what, Sweets? The de-fanged vampire will pounce?" She mocked. "You know, we could all get along if we shared her. I promise you, Rachel and I will be very good friends once I'm done with her." She chuckled and lowered her mouth to my neck, scarping her teeth against my skin, and a scream of pure terror escaped me at the feel of sharpened canines digging in my flesh. It barely had time to leave my lips, however, that already Skimmer was gone, violently ripped away from me, which sadly deprived me of the support I needed to stay upright. The hardwood floor rushed to meet me and I had to catch myself on my hands, the shock spreading painfully into my limbs unable to overshadow the relief I felt to be away from the blond vampire. My hand flew to my neck, feeling for any hint of blood, any sign that she might have broken my skin and done the unthinkable, but I found nothing. I slumped in relief, drained, panting like a McDonald's addict after a marathon. I very badly wanted to curl into a ball and cry for a while, but what little of my dignity Skimmer hadn't crushed under her boot demanded that I stand up. I wiped my eyes and pushed wobbly to my feet, still panting and tingling from Skimmer's "affectionate" attention, but steady enough to keep myself upright. Her scent coated me, the cloying, almost chokingly intense and alien incense making me sick to my stomach, but my desire for an immediate week-long shower would have to be put on hold for now.

If Skimmer really thought that Ivy would be any less than herself simply because she refused to drink blood, the bone rattling impact of her back with the stone wall Ivy pinned her against must have cured her of that delusion. I half expected them to go through it, cartoon style; anything more fragile than a vampire might very well have been seriously injured, but not having her spine snapped in two didn't mean that the blond vamp was out of trouble. She still had a very angry, almost feral, Ivy to deal with.

"Never. Touch her. Again." She snarled, her jaws snapping inches from Skimmer's eyes. "You have a problem with me, it stays with me, you understand? You don't take it out on her."

Skimmer's head was hung, her blond hair shaken loose during the scuffle creating a curtain that hid her face from view. Her whole body shook in Ivy's white-knuckled grip, what I first mistook for pained, terrified sobs turning out to be a fit of delighted laughter when she met Ivy's pitch black gaze, her own eyes as deep and blue as the ocean and sparkling with enjoyment. Ivy had played straight into her hand.

"Oh, Ivy... That's more like it." She sighed fondly, a new tender look on her face. Her hand rose to trace the smooth line of Ivy's jaw. "Now, honey, do it. Sink those little teeth in." Her hand dipped lower, over Ivy's throat and lower still, until it found the hem of her shirt, slid beneath it, exposing the taut, firm expanse of Ivy's stomach in the process, and shamelessly started cupping her breast. Skimmer flicked her thumb over Ivy's nipple, making her breath come quick and her eyes flutter close, anger, enjoyment and desire warring on her face. Her other hand slipped behind Ivy's waist, tugging her closer and closer until every inch of their bodies touched. Skimmer's leg slipped between Ivy's jean-clad thighs, eliciting a pleasured moan from her, and she brought her blue gaze to me, smiling a cold, smug smile.

_What the hell? No, no, no! That's not what's supposed to happen! You're supposed to kick her out and tell her never to come back, not make out with her again right under my nose!_

Ivy made soft, frustrated sounds, Skimmer's hands and words tempting her almost to her breaking point. She started trembling, so much that I feared she would shake herself apart, her grip tightening to the point where even Skimmer squirmed uncomfortably, and for an instant, the world froze. Would she do it? Would she lunge at Skimmer's offered throat, let her teeth break the skin and give her the satisfaction of her bite?

With an almost anguished wail, Ivy pushed herself off the wall, breathing hard and fast, her hands balled in to fists at her side. She straightened herself, her posture so tight she looked like she could snap, her chest heaving rapidly. Her gaze darted everywhere, from Skimmer to me to the hallway that led to the sanctuary. Her eyes barely met mine for a fraction of a second, but it still frightened me to see how close she was to completely loosing it. After a few seconds of palpable tension, she moved again, throwing herself at the wall this time, which she started hammering with her bare fists until her hands were bloodied and raw, screaming. She eventually slumped to the ground, her head lowered in shame, shaking uncontrollably from head to toe.

Silence filled the hallway, only broken by Ivy's erratic breathing. I wanted to reach out to her, to pull her in my arms and thank her for getting Skimmer off me, but balanced on the razor's edge as she was, I wouldn't have touched her with a twenty feet long pole. She could clear twenty feet in the blink of an eye; I'd seen her do it more than once. Skimmer, however, didn't have any such reservation. She slowly kneeled next to her lover, her hands moving soothingly across her rumbling shoulders and into her ebon hair. Ivy growled warningly as she did, but Skimmer was undeterred. She wrapped around Ivy, rocking her the way I wished I could, whispering softly in her ear again. I didn't know what to make of it, the sight of there being more to their relationship than sex and blood, that Skimmer might support Ivy that way.

I turned away when Ivy gave in and sank her teeth. It's the sound of choking and gagging that made me look back mere seconds later.

Ivy still sat at the foot of the wall, a small trickle of blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth, her eyes distant and empty. Skimmer stood away from her, all traces of the seductress gone from her face. Instead, she just looked like a flesh and blood woman whose heart had just been broken. Blood trickled from the bite on her neck, staining the collar of her shirt, but it seemed like the last thing on her mind just then.

"Are you happy, witch?" She asked in a dead voice. "You took the perfect living vampire, twisted her around your finger, _neutered _her and made her your little pet. Are you proud of yourself?" Her blue eyes shimmered with tears, not even a hint of black marring them. She looked so... fragile. So very lonely.

"It's not about her." Ivy said raggedly, her usually melodious voice so rough I had to check around to see if she hadn't vomited what little blood she had ingested. "She didn't do anything."

Skimmer twisted around to glance down at her lover. "You're right. She didn't. It's even worse, you did it yourself!" She inhaled deeply, trying to regain some semblance of composure. "I'm surprised you didn't buy yourself a collar and a leash."

"I'm not her pet!"

"Then stop pissing all over what we have!" She screamed right back. "What did she ever do for you, Sweets? She doesn't even want you! She prefers a man who can't even satisfy her to you! Do you really believe she's worth turning me down for?"

"What?!" I uttered, outraged by her comment on my sex life, my anger only made worse by the fact it was kind of true. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Oh, sweetie, I've been with enough women to know what we smell and look like when we're sated. You're not, not even close. I dare say, you got off more from what I did to you than what he did." She said wearily, not even bothering to look at me, which I was momentarily thankful for since my cheeks heated up in embarrassment. No, she was too busy looking at Ivy, who clearly could smell Marshall on me now. I wish I could say she looked angry, hurt, mad, surprised or anything else, any kind of emotion, it would have been good, or at least not as bad. I could deal with her if she let her emotions show, because that meant they didn't scare her enough to keep her from letting herself feel them. But there was nothing on her face, nothing at all. Her placid mask was on, her emotions buried to the furthest bottom of her soul. Bad sign...

Skimmer shook her head, disgusted by Ivy's blank expression, or perhaps by me, and started strolling down the hall, obviously fed up with the whole ordeal. Ivy's eyes trailed after her, her soul torn between me, the woman who'd let her down perhaps one too many times, and Skimmer, the one who claimed to love her but represented everything she hated about her own nature.

"Skimmer, wait." Ivy said after stealing a quick glance at me. She'd made up her mind, and a feeling of intense loss crushed my chest. You lose, Rachel Morgan.

"Don't." Skimmer growled, rooting Ivy in place before she even had a chance to get close. "Don't add insult to injury, Ivy! Until you're ready to get over yourself and act like a proper vampire again, then you and me, we're done!" And with those lovely parting words, she shifted gears into vamp speed, the sanctuary door banging close after an impossibly short amount of time. And so Ivy was officially single again, dumped after a thirteen years relationship, a lot of which had been from a distance, but still... It had to sting.

I should have felt some elation, some satisfaction, but all I felt was hollow. Ivy was in so much pain, it didn't feel like it was worth the price to have Skimmer out of our lives.

She stayed immobile in the hallway for a long time, her eyes fixed of the door Skimmer had just used. I stood a few steps behind her, anxiously waiting for her to move, to scream, to just do something.

Eventually she moved, her strides taking her past me as she headed for the kitchen, not bothering, or maybe incapable, to look at me as she did. She left a trail of vampire incense in her wake, making a brief burst of tingles shoot through me from my scar, but they weren't enough to distract me from the hint of pain I saw in her chocolate brown eyes.

Even with her masks up, she couldn't hide her emotional distress entirely... Jesus. Pain that intense would have most anyone breakdown entirely.

Gulp.

After taking a moment to gather myself, I followed her into the kitchen. We still had a lot to talk about.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter 12

The sound of Ivy fussing about welcomed me into the kitchen, and I while I walked in, I was silently glad she was on the other side of it. Without doing anything particularly threatening, it felt like she was dropping the temperature several degrees, her motions edging more than a little into vamp quickness. A half full glass of orange juice sat on the corner of the antique table, next to one of her brimstone-laced cookies, a single bite missing from it. Her head disappeared into the freezer, a clean dishtowel in her left hand. With a creaking of plastic, she loosened a handful of ice cubes that she wrapped into the towel, bringing them to her knuckles, staining the white cloth with her blood. Her hands looked even worse than I thought, swollen, raw, seeping blood, and I wasn't entirely sure she hadn't broken something. She'd really done a number on herself.

"The pain helps sometimes. It grounds me." She said before I could ask, in a flat voice that betrayed neither physical nor emotional pain, her back still turned to me. Her tone was distant, as if she was gazing upon some distant memories I didn't want to know about; the extents she had to go to through to keep her bloodlust bottled up when it gained on her, especially for those three years without any kind of release, were not something I was keen on exploring.

"Can I see?" I swallowed softly, keeping my voice low so it would stay steady. I was still shaky from Skimmer, and she was scaring me. A lot. It had been a long time since I'd seen her this intense, but I wanted to make sure she was at least okay on a physical level. "You might have hurt yourself."

Ivy turned to face me slowly, the freezer door shutting with a quiet thud behind her. Her spiky hair fell around her lowered face, hiding her eyes from view, but the current of frosty air that twined about me told me they were probably black as sin. It was irrational, but the sore red mark on her neck seemed to glare at me accusingly somehow.

"I don't think you want to touch _me_ right now, Rachel." I didn't miss the emphasis she put on "me". Damn it all to hell, telling her I'd slept with Marshall would have been hard enough with Skimmer available to console her. I never would have expected that the blond vamp would have dumped Ivy that way, and now, she didn't have anyone to run to and cry until she got herself together, except maybe Cormel, and I would rather bare my neck to her and beg than let her go to an undead in the shape she was in. She was hungry, restless, and, most importantly, in desperate need of some comfort, a dangerous mix that even a relatively decent vampire like him would take advantage of. Add to it that I probably smelled more tempting that sex incarnate to her with Skimmer's scent covering me, mixing with my own as well as hers. Not to mention Marshall's scent... her nose had to be giving her a hard time, and the odds were stacking up against me.

_Nice going, Rachel... Double d__amn, this would've been a good time to use my special perfume_, I thought, mentally kicking myself for not dabbing a little of the perfume that blocked a vamp's sense of smell Ivy had given me. I used it sparingly, the damn thing costing more than several months' worth of runs, but this hardly counted as waste; hell, if I didn't play my cards right, I'd end up without a vamp in my life to use it, but slipping out of the kitchen to put some of it on would be an admission of guilt, and Ivy would latch on to it without ever giving me a chance to explain.

"Let me see your hand, Ivy." I asked again, and without waiting for her permission, took her battered fingers gently in mine. I carefully felt for breaks in the delicate bones and found none, yet my eyes kept going from her hand to her face, watching for any cues; she didn't look good, and not strictly because she was depressed. Her face showed obvious discomfort, and even though she was doing it discreetly, I could see her massaging her side where the bullet had penetrated.

_What __are you even doing out of the hospital? Not even you can heal a gunshot wound _that_ fast._ Maybe she had felt fine, but hurt herself when she wrestled Skimmer off of me. I almost immediately regretted thinking that; it's not like I needed any extra guilt...

"Are you sure you're ready to be home yet?" I asked, still holding her hand, my eyes searching for hers. I didn't want to let go, afraid she would leave to go find some other way to forget the pain. I wanted to offer a little comfort at least; it wasn't because I'd slept with Marshall that Skimmer dumped her. The issues weren't related, and she had to understand that I was there for her anyway. Truth be told, I wanted to hug her so badly, but... well, life just sucks sometimes, and it would be a bad idea to touch her any more than I already was when she was still trying to get herself under control. Damn bloodlust.

"I'm fine." She answered curtly, trying to pull her hand away, but I held fast. Could I really keep hold to it if she tried? No way, but her attempts were half-hearted, and I gripped her hand more firmly in both of mine, looking unconvinced and concerned at the black-haired vamp. "I am fine." She repeated more slowly, almost threateningly. "I just got tired of spending my every waking moment _alone_ with my mother." Her words made yet another stab of guilt shoot through me. If only I hadn't been such a chicken shit and had faced the music, and Ivy's mother, by visiting more and making her stay in the hospital more bearable, maybe this whole mess would have been averted.

"I'm sorry. I should have faced the big bad vamp." I apologised.

"Never mind." She answered and buried her face in her hands. "I just wish... damnit, why did she have to choose now to stop shunning me, of all times?" I didn't have to ask to know she was talking about Skimmer.

"How did she get out?" I asked softly. "Is she really supposed to be out or did someone pull strings to..." I trailed off, wanting to know if she would own someone distasteful a favour for this. Or if the I.S. would come knocking with questions about an escaped blond-haired, blue-eyed vampire.

"She's a lawyer, and a good one." Ivy scoffed at my doubts. "She had her case in the bag three days after they locked her up, she just chose to stay in." Her eyes grew distant, a small, sad shadow of a smile playing on her lips. "It was an "absence makes the heart grow fonder" kind of thing. She wouldn't even accept conjugal visits, for God's sake. She preferred feeding on vamp junkies rather than letting me see her, the pig-headed fool." Did the fondness in her voice make uncomfortable? Only about as much as jumping up and down barefoot in a pile of rusty nails...

"When Erica visited her and told her about the incident, she kicked everything into gear and got herself out. And now she's gone. Damnit."

"I'm sorry about Skimmer, but..." I began to offer, stopping and shivering involuntarily when she met my eyes, frowning at me with twin black orbs.

"Why?" She scoffed harshly. "Why would you be sorry, you never even liked her. Shouldn't you be _glad_ she won't be showing up here anymore?"

"I..." I hesitated, taken aback by her open hostility, then sighed. "Ivy, it doesn't matter what I think. I know she was... is important to you."

"Just what did you think, exactly? I never understood why you two weren't at least on talking terms. She tried to be friendly, plenty of times at first, but you never even gave her a chance."

"Hey, she was bitchy with me all the time." I protested after Ivy jerked her hand away from mine, without leaving me any chance to hold on this time. "Just because she didn't wear a T-shirt reading "I hate Rachel's gut", doesn't mean she was genuinely friendly."

I took slow, backward steps away from Ivy, the tension almost leaving her as I did, her nose no longer giving her such a hard time. She reached for her glass, downing half of it with a mouthful of brimstone cookie.

_Easier to be apart. Always __fucking easier to be apart._ I thought in a surge of bitterness that showed on Ivy's face as well. In a perfect world, we would have been sitting in front of the TV in our pj's with a tub of rocky road, while she cried on my shoulder; I could have acted like her best friend. In our world, even the smallest physical comfort was out of reach. Life. Sucks.

"Skimmer wasn't friendly, Ivy, she was manipulative." I said with my arms crossed, the frustration loosening my tongue. "She only pretended to try and get along with me so she wouldn't rub you the wrong way."

"She had that much decency, at least." Ivy muttered into her glass, making my jaw drop slack. "Unlike you, she tried to make me more comfortable in this whole mess, if only a little."

"Hey, in case you missed it while you were busy getting her off me, before she _bit me_, thank you very much, Skimmer just dumped you, just because you wouldn't bite her! In front of me! Why are you taking her side?!"

"Because in order for her to dump me, we had to have a real relationship in the first place!" She shouted, slamming her glass on the table. For a second her eyes were ablaze with pain and resentment, but it was quickly replaced by regret; it was too late anyway. The cat was out of the bag.

"What is that supposed to mean?" I gritted my teeth, focusing on my lingering anger so I could pretend her slipup wasn't ripping bloody gouges into my heart. We had something, something real. We did, or at least I thought so. What if she really had been only pretending for my sake in the last months? Was she really as miserable as Jenks said?

"Rachel, I'm sorr-" She begun with her head lowered in shame.

"Because let's be honest, here, Ivy, you're better off without her and your _real_ relationship!" I cut her off, my voice dripping with scorn. "She dumped you because you wouldn't fuck her in front of me! Yeah, that sounds so real to me! But I guess old habits die hard, don't they?"

Ivy's head whipped up, all trace of shame gone. Her face was void of anger, but the temperature in the room dropped even lower, so much so that I was surprised I wasn't able to see my breath turn into mist, as she pulled an aura on me. The kitchen faded from my awareness, only Ivy's black eyes remaining. My heart started racing, as if it wanted to jump out of my chest and run the hell away from the angry vampire before she decided to rip it out and eat it.

Okay, so maybe I could stuff my foot in my mouth with the best of them, too...

"What did you say?" Ivy asked slowly, with deadly calm, her battered knuckles turning white on her glass. "Old _habits_ die hard?"

"I know about you two." I admitted, more subdued, although unlike her, I wasn't ashamed of what I said. "I know... what she did to you when you were in high school."

"What she _did to me_?!" Ivy exclaimed, bewildered. "Are you actually telling me you hate her because she showed me men aren't the only option, Rachel? Because ultimately she made me love you? Can you really be this self-centered?"

"Ivy, that's not what I meant! God, don't you see? She was using you as a source of blood and sex back then, and she's doing the exact same thi- Jesus!" I never finished my sentence, because something flew within an inch of my face at roughly a zillion miles per seconds, crashing against the wall behind me with a thunderous noise, drops of citrus-scented liquid splattering me as I ducked away from the shower of glass and juice.

My blood ran cold as I spotted the dent in wall; Christ, Ivy could've easily killed me with that glass if she hadn't had such great hand-eye coordination, but honestly, what the glass hadn't done, she looked more than ready to get her hands dirty and do herself. Her face was set in murderous anger, her hands braced on the kitchen table clenched tightly enough to make the solid wood groan in protest.

"Who told you that? WHO?! I want to-" she seethed, but quickly grew quiet. Her eyes shifted quickly, and I could almost see the gears spinning in her head. "Bastard. You rat-sucking son of a _bitch_! Kisten, Rachel? You talked to _him_ about Skimmer and me?"

"Well, yeah..." I was too stunned to hear her calling Kisten that, and maybe a little shaky after a glass grazed my nose at terminal speed, to provide any more of an answer.

"And it never crossed your mind that he might be trying to turn you against her? Or did you think Skimmer and I are the only two jealous vampires in the world? Do you think I'm the only one who instinctively dislikes those who split the attention of those I care about?"

"What are you t... oh."

"Why yes, Rachel. Me. How nice of you to remember I loved him as well."

"Maybe if she didn't act exactly the way he said she did, I might have." I said venomously; the little voice of reason in my head kept telling me that she'd just been dumped and was probably looking for a fight, but I could barely hear it over the angry pounding of my own heart. Besides, Kisten loved Ivy; if he said that Skimmer wasn't good for her, I believed him.

"You don't know the first thing about her." Ivy growled.

"Don't I? Enlighten me, then! What's her excuse?!"

"Are you sure, Rachel?" Ivy asked in a sombre tone after a short pause. The intensity of her aura diminished, if only a little, when she sat down and released her death grip on the table. "It's not a pretty story."

I hesitated, but only for a moment; yes, vampire stories, real ones, were the stuff of nightmares, but I couldn't keep the moral high ground if I couldn't face this so-called truth about Skimmer. I nodded.

"Before she came here, Skimmer was Nathalie, her old master's, favourite." Ivy began darkly. "It's an old tradition amongst her bloodline. For the past thousand years, Nathalie took the first daughter of each generation of her line as a companion. This generation, it was Skimmer."

"She was a dead vamp's companion?" I asked, not impressed by this story yet. Plenty of vampires had been forced into ugly relationships; heck, Ivy was one of them, and she was one of the most decent persons I knew. "What does that have to do with what she was like in high... school... oh God... Had she... were they...?" I trailed off, horrified. All of a sudden, it made perfect sense, and the last, the very, absolutely last thing I wanted was to hear more.

"Yes. Nathalie had already touched Skimmer for the first time when I met her. For almost a year, actually, Skimmer shared Nathalie's bed."

"You met her when she was sixteen! That means she was... Ivy, that's sick! She was fifteen when a dead vamp first got her hands on her!" I wasn't angry anymore, simply utterly disgusted. That a millennia old monster could simply get her claws and fangs into a teenager without anyone raising a finger... it was beyond words!

But the worse thing was probably how blasé Ivy looked about the whole thing. No seething anger, not even silent rage. She didn't even blink. It made a new, even more chilling thought dawn on me.

"How old were you when Piscary first called you to him?" I asked quietly, my lips barely moving for fear of spilling my guts on the floor if I opened my mouth. I had to grab a nearby chair for support, my knuckles immediately turning white the instant my fingers wrapped around the solid wood.

"Sixteen." She answered simply, as if her abuse at Piscary's hands hadn't just taken on a whole new level of sickness. I'd always assumed she was college aged when it began, like those shadows I saw at Piscary's before Kist took it over. Never in my worst nightmares had I imagined she could have been so young.

"This is so wrong. So goddamn wrong. Why didn't anybody stand up to this?!" I asked no one in particular, lost in my outrage and anger as I was.

"They were within their rights, Rachel. We were both adults according to our laws."

"Your laws blow." Just when I thought vamp culture had hit rock bottom, someone tossed it a shovel. I really didn't want to know if the hole went any deeper...

She stole a quick glance at me, and I saw neither annoyance nor acknowledgement at my disgust and horror. "I'm not one to argue that. It still didn't stop our parents." She continued flatly. "My mother sent me far away almost as soon as it begun, but Piscary worked fast. The damage was done; as bad as I was a few months back, as a teenager, with my hormones all over the place and my instincts burgeoning..." Her eyes were distant, like her voice. A small shiver ran through her, and I didn't want her to continue. I wanted to run to my room, huddle underneath the covers and pretend I never heard any of this. "I was a monster. Piscary... it was part of his duties as my master to help me curb them, so I could fit into society, but he had no interest in that. He wanted me savage." She swallowed softly, and wrapped her arms around her middle. "He liked me savage." I barely caught her admission.

"What about Skimmer?" I asked, not so much because I was curious than to pull her away from her memories. To be honest, in this moment, I missed Kisten more acutely than I had in months. I couldn't deal with this, not by a fucking mile, and I never felt more woefully inadequate for her than now. She needed understanding where I could only offer pity and horror.

"Skimmer..." She started, almost slurring, before shaking her head, as if she'd been dozing off. Her eyes focused sharply on me, but not before I caught a glimpse of the ghosts that haunted her. "She wasn't quite my polar opposite, but she was a lot more wholesome than me. Nathalie wanted other things from her, almost... normal things. She taught Skimmer everything she could, too much even. When I met her, everyone in school wanted to be close to her. She could have anyone she wanted, but no one actually caught her interest. No one but me. I was intense enough to pique her curiosity. Plus, what Piscary never taught me about control, he taught me about pleasure and pain, just like Nathalie had done with Skimmer. Not many of the students had ever been with a master."

"A match made in Hell." I muttered, and Ivy scoffed softly. "I guess you two had a blast the instant you laid eyes on each other."

"No. God, I hated her so much at first. The same things that made me sick were making her a bloody goddess in the eyes of everyone, even if she didn't like guys and didn't hide it, and it felt so unfair. It didn't stop her. She started slow hunting me even as she worked to fix me. She helped me control my instincts beyond simply pitting my will against them and fighting every urge I had, and I systematically refused her offers and her advances. I just took her friendship and her help, knowing how she wanted more." Golly, wasn't that a subtle reproach...

"The first week, I nearly killed someone, because I didn't listen to her when she warned me that a teenage boy looking for another notch in his belt was a bad idea to slake my bloodlust." She said before I could reply anything. "Drained him, broke most of his ribs, both of his arms and shattered one of his knees beyond any kind of recovery." That she could have inflicted so much damage at sixteen astounded me for a second, until I remembered that unlike me, Ivy had been practising martial arts all of her life. She had the experience as well as the stamina and physical prowesses; no wonder she could mop the floor with me. "I would have been kicked out if the guy hadn't tried to rape me first, when I tried to leave after my bite hurt him. I got off on self-defence and with a reputation as a total freak. No one even dared talk to me anymore after that, save one person. Care to guess who?"

"Skimmer." I "guessed" with a roll of the eyes. I wished she would loose the snide.

"She was just too determined to get her fangs into me to give up so easily. It took me a long time to admit I wanted her as well, longer still to admit I actually had feelings for her. I'd known her for two months when she finally caught me. I raged at her for winning and being right for a long time.

"_She_ caught _you_? But you're the dominant one?"

"Unusual, I know. She's the one who caught me, but I wouldn't go down without a fight. We struggled for dominance, and I came out on top. She still lured me into sleeping with her, and once I had a taste, I couldn't stop. At first, I made her look like she was in an abusive relationship every time I gave in to my desire and went to her, but she never refused me. She did not care. "I can be patient" she said, "I made you admit you want me. We'll work on loving me later." She was patience and beauty incarnate, and despite myself, my feelings grew from lust and desire to hurt into something more tender. I actually looked forward to seeing her. I didn't leave the instant the deed was done anymore. And then one afternoon she woke up to me smiling at her, without an abundance of bruises covering half her body. The rest is history."

She observed my reactions closely. I probably looked downright grey and wobbly. I certainly felt that way.

"Maybe she helped you back then." I admitted after sucking in a long, steadying breath. "Maybe. But you're not that person anymore. Now she's just a blood-sucking bitch looking to drag you down to her level."

"Dragging me down to her level? You mean... being a healthy vampire who doesn't torture herself every time she gives a little fang? Or is it simply being a vampire?" Ivy's face darkened; her hands fell limply at her sides. "I guess that's that then. The reason you hate her... is because she's a vampire. Just like me." It took less than a heartbeat for the tone of Ivy's voice to douse my anger. It was a dead voice, all traces of life and hope gone from it. "Damn you, Skimmer. Goddamn you, you were right." She planted her gaze into mine, and what I saw in it finished ripping my heart out; let's just say that her eyes made her voice bright and sunny in comparison. "The acceptance, the beauty I want, they're just a silly dream, nothing more. I should have burned it at the stake long ago." She rose, walking past me and into the hall in a puff of angry vampire incense.

You know what? I can't actually stuff my foot in my mouth with the best of them. I can't, because I am the best, plain and simple. No one can even compete.

"Where are you going? Ivy, wait!" I stepped into the hallway and called out after her, my shout making her dark silhouette come to a halt. I almost sighed in relief; if she just listened, we could be okay. "I don't know what Skimmer said, and it doesn't matter, you can't let it get to you! You've worked too hard to just give up because of her."

Ivy's still form started shaking. I thought for a second she was crying, and almost threw caution to the wind and reached out for her when I realised she wasn't. At all. The deep shadows in the hallway seemed to coalesce around her like a black cloak, almost as if her mirthless chuckling summoned them, like the outside manifestation of the darkness her soul was drowning in.

"What Skimmer said? Skimmer didn't make me realise how pointless and impossible what I want is, Rachel, you did." She laughed joylessly in that God-awful voice. "You did when you turned away from me, even though you understood everything we could have. And now, you just confirmed it. You don't accept what I am, maybe you never have."

"Would you please stop interpreting everything I said in the worst possible way?! There's more to you than hunger. Not to Skimmer. I don't care about your past, she's like a... a frigging living undead. Even if she's a victim, no especially if she's a victim in all of this, she's not what you need!"

"I doubt you mean that." She turned around slowly, her posture and tone deceptively relaxed. "You're terrified of ending up bound to me, even though I did everything I could to avoid that, ever since you were attacked by that damn demon. You can't possibly think there's so much more to me if you fear me this way, now can you? I tried to be more for you, and look what that gave me!"

"So you'll just go back to the way you were, then? Throw everything you've worked for away so you can be with her? If you do that, then you're not going to be who you want to be, you'll be revelling in your own ugliness. Maybe you don't think so, but I know you're better than that, and you deserve better- hey!"

I yelped in surprise when Ivy rushed me, the only thought in my mind that I had finally pushed her too far and was about to get a new scar and lose a bit of fluids for my arrogance. Seriously, what the hell was wrong with me? Following her, when she was in an emotional tempest of a mood, while I was covered in the most potent cocktail of scents ever designed to get idiots like me killed by their vamp roommate? While we argued? Yeah, brilliant. Roll in the Nobel Prize, make it a posthumous edition. I would like to thank my parents who clearly have done something wrong along the way for their daughter to be so dumb. Make this my epitaph while you're at it...

But no, Ivy didn't rip me apart where I stood. In fact, considering she was pinning me against the wall, the swift motion carried an odd gentleness. Even when she was angrier than a wet wasp at me and hungry as hell, she couldn't bring herself to hurt me. Yay for me, boo for natural selection.

"And who is that, Rachel?" She murmured in my ear, her lips brushing against its soft shell, and good God, the bound heat, the repressed longing in her voice made me wish she was screaming at me. "Who is better than someone who threw her life away for me? Who freed me, when nothing and no one could? Tell me, are you that person, _dear heart_?" She used the endearment like a knife, stabbing it into my heart. "Because if you're the one who's supposed to be better than Skimmer and I deserve you, how is it that no matter how hard I try, _I can't have you_?"

"I..." I didn't have an answer for that. In the light she saw her in, Skimmer did seem like someone she should be hanging on too, but she wasn't... was she? I wasn't so sure anymore; I kept seeing Skimmer in my mind, wrapping herself around Ivy, comforting her and apologising, then offering her neck, without fear or judgement. Surely, the fact that she'd been the one to send Ivy spiralling out of control, as well as what she said afterwards, cancelled that out, right?

"What we have, it may not be your... _definition_ of love, Rachel, but I'm not sure it's such a bad thing anymore. She loves me, and she accepts me. It's enough for me, and more than you ever gave me."

"You call that accepting?" I shot back nervously; even I couldn't be completely oblivious to the six feet of angry vampire almost pressed against me, the cold radiating from her quickly turning into scalding heat, but as stupid as it was, I didn't want her to go. "She called you my pet, for Christ sake, just because you wouldn't bite her!"

"I am your pet, Rachel, and as I recall, you did try to neuter me. Just like she said. She's the only one who ever called me out on how messed up you made me." One of her hands left my shoulder to slip into her jeans pocket. "You tried to de-fang me. Even when you were saying "yes" you tried to erase the part of me that you can't deal with and keep only what suits you. If that's not domestication, I don't know what is."

"I was trying to help you!" I said in my own defence, the ring of truth of her words lancing more pain through my heart. "I thought my magic could help you, Ivy! You have this all backwards. It was never about... _neutering_ you!"

"Skimmer never tried to _help me_. It's not my ridiculous hang-ups about who I am and what I want she accepts; it's me, the vampire." She pulled her hand out of her pocket, flashing the pain amulet I had given her, which she was now holding, to me before slipping the hand that held it at the small of my back, beneath the hem of my shirt. I had a fraction of a second to feel the gentleness and cold of her touch and her other hand slip into my hair. I gazed, bewildered, into her bottomless black eyes before my body went numb, the spell overtaking both our bodies; her intentions were clear as crystal. "Just look how _accepting_ you are."

I saw her coming. I knew what she had in mind, but I couldn't do anything. She was standing on the edge, and even hinting at resisting would fling her over. I barely felt anything anyway, not her lips on mine, not the firm, but careful strength of her embrace; nothing at all. There was nothing distracting me from her feelings, and boy, I had front row seats to see them...

What happened in the hospital when I first handed Ivy the amulet was happening all over again; just as she pressed her lips more firmly to mine, the shock letting my mouth fall open for her, Ivy's aura started crawling over me, charged with affection so profound that it took my breath away. But it didn't make me feel clean and pure, or warmed me to the bottom of my soul, not this time. This time, it chilled me to my core; her love was a withering rose now, alone in a garden overrun by weeds, its beauty slowly bleeding away as it died, starved by my lack of respect for it. Seeing it made me want to curl up and die.

"Ivy..." I almost sobbed, in awe, when she briefly pulled away to glance at my eyes, a tiny, sickly spark of emotion in her twin obsidian orbs. I didn't have a clue how she could even have stayed sane this long, living next to me while her feelings never went answered, slowly seeping poison into her, but whatever had kept her strong, it was either gone, or simply wasn't enough anymore. Her very strength and resolve were fading now; even if she believed she was making her own choice by going after Skimmer, I could see the real reason. Despair was creeping up on her, like a barbed wire cruelly tightening around her heart, and all she wanted was someone to face the coming darkness with.

And I selfishly wanted to find a way to stop that and keep her here with me; God help me, now that she was all but shoving her love down my throat, and I saw that she was finally getting over me, I wanted to keep it alive, even knowing how much it hurt her. Talk about making up my mind, but I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand to gaze into her soul like that, with her feelings so raw, exposed and _dying_, and with an anguished little whimper, I pulled her lips frantically to mine, kissing her with a desperate strength. Her lips parted in surprise, and my tongue invaded her mouth, miraculously avoiding the sharp edges of her fangs. It was entirely possible I was kissing my own death, but I didn't care.

There was the faintest of clatter at my feet. Ivy, in her shock, had dropped the amulet, and as soon as she did, a torrent of wild sensations assaulted me. I kissed her back almost forcefully, moaning into the velveteen softness of her warm mouth, hints of blood (I spared a disgusted thought that it was probably Skimmer's blood I tasted, but promptly shoved it away), orange and brimstone mixing with her essence to make me drunk with... need. I couldn't deny that it was need. Not this time, not now. It was do or die now, and the scales were tipping much too far towards die.

I had just fumbled for the hem of her shirt, my fingers slipping beneath it to caress the soft skin at the small of her back, when she shoved me away, hard. Our blurred auras separated just as brutally, making me double over in pain when the reality imbalance her pure aura had pushed away struck me in the gut like a jackhammer, making my eyes water

Ivy didn't look resolved anymore when I looked. She didn't look tragic in her pain and despair. No, the woman who crashed to the floor gracelessly, her eyes wide and wild, her breath panting rapidly, just looked scared out of her mind. And hurt, mustn't forget hurt, the pain veiling her rapidly constricting brown eyes.

_Jesus, what have I done?_ It looked like I couldn't have caused Ivy more pain had I ripped her heart out and trampled it.

"No," she whispered under her breath, her hands clenched around handfuls of her hair "no, no, no, no."

"Ivy..." I began hesitantly, taking equally slow and hesitant steps towards the crushed vampire. She showed no sign of noticing me, but I wasn't quite so dumb as to believe she wasn't aware of me. True enough, she soon fixed her gaze on me, her eyes haunted and hollow.

"Why?" She asked, almost flinching when I tried to help her up. "For God's sake, why couldn't you just let me go?"

"Ivy, please get up..." I pleaded, my throat tight with emotion, and reached for her again. "I can't stand to see you like this. Come on, get up."

"Don't touch me!" She shrieked, making me jump, and skittered away from me like a terrified child before the big bad wolf, until her back hit the nearby wall. I'd broken her; the woman whose will recovered from untold torments and came back from the darkest abyss was now lying broken and defeated at my feet, felled by one kiss from me. There was no intoxication in the knowledge; in fact, it made me sick. I never wanted this kind of power over her; hell, I didn't want anyone to have this kind of power over Ivy.

"I don't understand." I whispered, hardly able to push the words past the lump in my throat. "Ivy, isn't this what you wanted?"

"NO! No, I didn't want this! I wanted you to show me I was wasting my time with you, that it was hopeless, not give me a taste of all we could have!" She screamed, then let loose that horrible dead laugh once again, her eyes starting to shimmer. "But you can't ever do anything the way I want, can you?" She whispered snidely, her face hidden behind her hands so I wouldn't see her tears, her sorrow hidden behind anger so she didn't have to face it. "I don't want this anymore, Rachel. I'm sick of sitting at your feet and scrounge for whatever scrapes of affection you can deign give me without jeopardizing your sexual certainties. You don't want me, I get it, but she does. She loves me."

"_You_ love _me_." I pointed out pathetically.

She raised her gaze to me, the vulnerability and hopelessness in her eyes making my heart stop. "I don't want to anymore." She whispered, and I gasped in pain. "Don't let me give her up in the name of something that can never be. If I ever meant anything to you, please... let me go. I'm begging you. Tell me whatever you want, that this was a mistake... anything?"

I walked slowly towards her again, without letting her any room to escape. It was a terrible mistake to corner a vampire, but Ivy was the one who looked scared out of her mind now, not me, and I wasn't entirely sure it wasn't the best thing for her if she went through me to escape anyway.

"I can't." I whispered hoarsely as I knelt before her, sorrow etched on my face. "I can't let you leave." I reached out slowly for her, despite the black eyes and the twitching, and the fact that one reflexive move from her would leave me with broken limbs. I pushed a strand of raven hair out of her eyes, and, steadying myself on her trembling shoulders, leaned in and gently captured her mouth with mine. Her lips were so wonderful beneath mine, and I lightly brushed my tongue along them, seeking entrance to deepen the kiss, but she wouldn't respond, even if she made no move to push me away this time.

"It's so cruel to kiss me like this when I can smell Marshall on you." She sniffed after I pulled away, her eyes lightly shut and her face lowered. Some of the tension was gone from her frame, but she looked more resigned than relaxed, to be honest.

"That's not what you think." I sighed and offered her a sad smile.

"Like there's a hundred way to interpret it?" She growled, but her brief bout of defiance died when I tried to press my finger to her lips to silence her. She made it look so easy when she pulled it off, but with my sluggish reflexes, she easily dodged me and caught my wrist. "You chose him over me."

"I made a mistake. I missed you so badly, Ivy." I admitted, finally able to face the truth myself. "This place just isn't the same without you, hell, my life isn't the same without you. Around Marshall, it wasn't as bad. I mistook that feeling for love, and I hurt you both because of it. I don't think he'll ever speak to me again. Please, believe me. As much as I hate myself for hurting him... hurting you is worse."

I cradled her face in my hands, using my thumbs to trace her delicate features, the smooth line of her jaw, the silkiness of her lips. She was... God, she was so beautiful, even if I wished she could be smiling. I always knew she was gorgeous, you know, on account of not being blind, but for the first time, I felt that tragic, breath stealing beauty truly sink in to the bottom of my heart. "I don't want Marshall, I want you." I said with firm conviction. "We shared auras, just a minute ago." I added worriedly when she remained silent, and pressed my forehead against hers. Now that I had opened my heart and admitted that I wanted Ivy, and after coming this close to losing her forever twice in as many weeks, keeping my distance from her seemed beyond me. "Don't you know how I feel about you now?"

"You were so confused... I don't know. I didn't want to believe I saw love underneath it all."

"I'm sorry that I've been such a bonehead to you. But it's your fault for falling in love with an idiot who needs to come within an inch of loosing someone she loves just to realise she loves her." I joked, and I thought I saw a hint of a shadow of a chuckle escape Ivy. "I should've taken a hint. When that guy in the alley said he'd... it didn't matter that he held a gun to my face and was about to kill me, all I could think about was how I didn't want him to ever lay a finger you. I always want to die whenever I hurt you." Another episode sprung to my mind, one I had never been comfortable observing too closely. "When Lee took me into the Ever After, it was the thought of you that brought me back home... to you. You're my home, Ivy Tamwood, and I think... I know now that I do love you." I took her hand in mine, as gently as I could, and brought it to my lips. "Please give us one more chance." _Please, God, let me make things right. For her, if not for me._

Ivy stared into my eyes for the longest time, searching them for some sort of hint or confirmation, and I didn't shy away from the lingering eye contact. Her breath shuddered once, and she slowly, for a vampire, got to her feet and stalked towards the foyer.

"I have to be insane to give up a sure thing with Skimmer for another shot at you." She muttered with her back turned to me. "You make me hate myself more than anyone since Piscary, you know that?"

I almost took offence at that remark, but upon reflecting on what she just said, I realised she had a right to be bitter. She was going to break the heart of her first true love. Nothing to be laughing about, I suppose.

"You may not think so, but Skimmer deserves better than this. A clean break is the very least I can do for her." She said darkly, and turned to face me. "Can I ask you to stay up? We still have a few things to talk about. I shouldn't be long."

"Yeah, of course." I answered, a little shaky with the dispersing fear that she would simply leave despite my declaration of love. She seemed about to add something, but she thought better of it and turned to leave. "It's good that you're home."

"Good to be home." She said over her shoulder, and I could swear I saw a hint of a smile. "I..." She began hesitantly, but couldn't seem to let the words out.

"I know. I do to." I answered, taking a guess as to what my usually blunt, no nonsense vampire might have trouble saying. It didn't feel any kind of wrong to say that; it was the truth, I realised. She nodded at me, and unlike her ex a few minutes ago, she didn't slam the door behind her, a huge victory. If only the words "You make me hate myself worse than Piscary" hadn't been uttered seconds ago, I would've made a little happy dance.

I picked myself up off the floor and headed to the kitchen. It wasn't quite as big a mess as it was when I had a go at it with my spelling, but I fully expected Ivy to walk in pretty depressed (read: A fucking emotional wreck) and a clean house would go a long way towards not rubbing her the wrong way. I picked the shattered remains of the glass off the floor first, although there was nothing I could do about the dent in the wall the glass had left without some plaster and a bit of paint. The dishes were next, and I felt a stab of jealousy at the evidence that Ivy had cooked for Skimmer.

_Jesus, I turn green every time I see Ivy do anything for her. Am I blind or something?_ It was really time I took a bloody hint. I'd never really convinced myself that I didn't care what Ivy and Skimmer did together, but I'd always blamed it on Skimmer being a woman and taking some of the attention Ivy usually showed me. I wondered now if it wasn't simply because Ivy had actually deep feelings for the blond vampire; I had the hardest time seeing her cooking for Cormel or David, her two other crushes, and while I hated the idea of Rynn and her together because it smacked of abuse, I'd never felt anything at the thought of Ivy and David having a meaningless fling.

_Hints, hints, hints. I just suck at them._

With the kitchen cleaned, I headed for the shower to wash off Marshall's scent to the best of my abilities. My head was still buzzing with everything that had happened, and I realised with a start that in the maelstrom of Ivy's return, I had forgotten to warn her about the possibility of Saladan being after both our hides. Killing Ivy meant open war with the vampires, a stupid or crazy move, but, oh look, the guy was option number two, a complete nutter. I got worried, but her cell sent me straight to voice mail. Damn.

I tried to relax as I settled into my bedroom with my copy of "Spelling with Bella, A thousand tips for the klutzy witch", ley line edition. I wouldn't be caught dead with it, to be honest, but my mother claimed that the two reasons she got the ley line part of her witch's degree was my father and this book. I had to start somewhere; Ceri was great with the really freaking high level stuff, but she didn't have the patience to watch me stumble around the basics, let alone teach them to me. Plus, I had mysterious troubles getting into any catching up ley line class at the university. I had a nagging suspicion they didn't like the fact that one of their most revered teacher had "died" shortly after being involved in an investigation I was a part of. Pricks. The old bat wasn't even dead, but it's not like they'd believe me if I told them that.

Thankfully, the night hadn't yet begun to break when I heard the front door open and close. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and padded out of my room in my stocking feet. I blinked in surprise when I found the kitchen empty, and strained to listen, trying to locate Ivy by sound. I picked up a faint, rhythmic sound coming from the living room, so I headed that way. The sound gained focus as I went, and I identified it clearly as a woman's sobbing.

_Gosh, Ivy, you could have sought me out..._ If we were going to truly be together, she was going to have to learn to lean on me when the going got tough.

I walked into the living room, and froze. There were two people in there, one kneeling before the couch, Ivy, the other lying across it. The woman's face was obscured by Ivy's body, but I recognised what I could see of the clothing. It was Skimmer, and she was the one crying, although her sobbing was steadily fading. Her stockings were torn, I noticed, and I could only find one of her shoes; the first bubbling of fear started in the pit of my stomach.

"Ivy?" I called her out shakily.

"Don't come any closer." She growled at me, her voice as smooth as ground glass. "This is hard enough without your fear driving me insane."

"What happened?" I asked, taking a hesitant step towards her. The memory of her retelling of their early relationship was still fresh in my mind, and I feared Skimmer had somehow pushed Ivy back into that sorry state.

"Stay back." She warned me again, but I didn't listen.

"Are you hurt?" I began, concerned, but ended up shrieking instead when she whipped around snarling.

I had a feeling Ivy's face in that moment would haunt my nightmares for a good long while...

A/N: I feel like a broken record saying this, but sorry for the long wait. Now that there's a semblance of order in my life, I'll try to update this or something else weekly. See you guys next wednesday... I hope.


	13. Chapter 12

I haven't written in forever... So sorry guys. I'd like some feedback to help me get back in the game (more seriously this time). Honest, I have no life now. Frequent updates are promised... if you still have any faith left in me. Anyway, this chapter's a little short, but like I said, I'm a little rusty.

**Chapter 12**

Blood was everywhere. On the soft grey suede of Ivy's couch, on the front of Skimmer's shirt, and perhaps most importantly, or at least intimidating-ly, it covered half of Ivy's face, which took the snarling mouthful of fangs she was baring at me from "really-intimidating-might-want-to-back-the-hell-off" scary to "crapping-your-pants-and –screaming-like-a-little-girl" scary. The fact that the blood came from the torn mess of Skimmer's eerily still throat... it was scary icing on the scary cake, really; I had already reached my limit, you couldn't scare me anymore than I already was, no sir.

_She killed her. Ivy killed Skimmer!_ I couldn't help myself thinking in horror and stupefaction before I spotted the faint movement of her chest and calmed down a fraction. Vampires at rest almost looked dead. It gave me one hell of a start that first time I slept over at Kist's place, I remembered...

Ivy shuddered, hard, and time froze when the raw hunger in her eyes hit me. She had lost it, completely, and now, in my terror, I had given her the mother of blood aphrodisiacs. My breath whooshed out of me, my blood running so cold it was unbearable; I was dead, completely and absolutely dead. The manner in which Ivy would kill me was mere formality. Heck, the impact when she rammed me to the floor would probably be enough to knock me out cold; why was I afraid? This would probably be the closest I could get to dying in my sleep, considering the life I led...

Miraculously, she didn't lunge for my throat, her body instead tensing like a piano wire. I think it was those years we spent together that saved me. Months after months of trying her hardest not to scare me, and beating herself up with shame and guilt whenever I jumped because of her vamp eeriness had obviously conditioned her to react quite differently to my fear. She turned away in shame, her bloodstained hands raised to hide the mess of her face.

"I didn't do this." She whispered, her desperate need for my belief so raw in those few words that I took a step back before I could reach for her and comfort her. Touching her would have been pushing my already strained luck very hard. "I'm trying to help her. You have to believe me, I didn't do this" Probably despite herself, her pale, pink (and incredibly soft, I remembered before slapping myself upside the head, mentally, for thinking about a kiss at a time like this) tongue peeked out of her crimson lips, and she shuddered again, in reviled pleasure this time, when it lapped up some of the fresh blood that covered her face. Her eyes fluttered for a heartbeat, but almost immediately, she made a harsh sound from deep in her throat, and her jaw clenched with the effort of reining her nature in. My heart tightened in my chest again. She couldn't fight what she was, no matter how hard she tried. The vampire always won out in the end.

"Ivy... Ivy, look at me!" I almost had to shout to get her attention, focused as she was on not licking more blood off her lips. I could only imagine how hard this was for her; seriously, whoever said vampirism was glamorous had never laid eyes on a scene like this. "It's okay. I believe you." I said when her nervous black eyes finally fixed on me with an intensity that chilled me, if only for a second. I may love and trust her, but despite what you may think, I do have some survival instincts; she was still a very strained vampire, and forgetting would kill me. "Tell me what happened."

"She was attacked." Ivy panted, and a sigh of disgust escaped her when the effort of talking to me and keeping her craving in check proved too much. In my heart of hearts, I knew she wouldn't have done this, but seeing her like this, licking blood off her face and fingers with guilt written all over her... Heavens above, I couldn't help but doubt. "It was a dead vamp. He was waiting in her hotel room. He had just left when I..." A choked sound escaped her again, of raw pain, anguish and pure, roving anger. "She was just laying there, Rachel, like a broken doll sobbing on the floor. She was in so much pain... she actually begged me to... God..."

_Skimmer's been... raped? _I thought, horrified. Maybe it hadn't been in the traditional sense, but trust me; an unwilling bite feels very much like rape, and no matter how badly I hated her, she didn't deserve this. Nobody did.

"Biting her was the only thing I could do to calm her down." Ivy continued, her back turned to me, facing Skimmer, her hands pushing strands of dark blond hair clumpy with half-dried blood away from her semi-conscious lover's face. "The bites he left were such a mess, and he didn't bother cleaning them. She was bleeding out, you have to believe me."

"Shh." I soothed her quietly, knowing she could hear me anyway. "I understand. I believe you." Vampire saliva is pretty incredible, considering it's still spit. It contains endorphin-stimulating compounds that cause incredible pleasure, other chemicals that make the brain interpret pain as yet more pleasure, and it can be refined to help create a mental bond between a vampire and another creature. But one of its lesser known properties is that it greatly stimulates healing as well. It might be itchy as hell, and believe me, I know, but a vampire bite will heal in easily a tenth of the time, and much more cleanly, than a normal bite mark will. Seeing Skimmer's neck, it was obvious that Ivy had saved her life by adding her saliva to those wounds. "What can I do to help?" I offered her.

Ivy half turned to look at me, her eyes somewhat clearer now than they were a second ago. "Don't come closer, please. I dosed her on pheromones and there's a thick cloud of them around her. I'd never be able to..." She shuddered hard again, her eyes fluttering close briefly before opening again, afraid and shimmering. "I won't be able to handle it if you set off your scar."

"Okay." I swallowed, a little afraid and more than a little saddened. I wanted to rock her in my arms and tell her it would be okay. She was in such desperate need of it it hurt to see. "I'll... I'll get the first aid kit."

Ivy nodded gratefully at me and turned her attention back to the barely conscious vampire lying on our couch. I padded out of the living room, leaving them alone as Ivy started whispering to Skimmer, a soft breath of soothing and reassuring sounds, and walked briskly to Ivy's bathroom. Under her sink was a large, well supplied box of medical supplies, a must in our chosen profession. Absently, I traced the bright red cross adorning it; I had so many memories tied to this box, and I while it may sound strange, most were good... and relating to the raven haired woman I had just left in our living room. Looking back, how many times had I come home to Ivy, scraped up from a run? She always insisted on patching me up herself, whenever she sensed blood or even a hint of discomfort on me. There was no point in arguing, and so quite a few times I had ended sitting on the couch, sometimes, I'll admit, in varying states of undress, while Ivy skilfully cleaned and bandaged scrapes and burns. I would always recall the prior events, and we would laugh, or sometimes cried when things went wrong, together, in perfect companionship, confident that her vampire impulse to protect the sick and injured would keep us both safe. Yes, those were good times. Odd how you can find reminder of those in the strangest of places, at the strangest of times.

Looking back at those memories, I quickly realised that those might have been nice excuses to let Ivy touch me... Who knows? Yeah...

Snapping out of that line of thought before I made myself blush, I grabbed the kit and brought it to Ivy, placing it on the coffee table behind her before leaving her to her work, the snaps of the box opening and her rummaging accompanying me. With a sigh, I let myself lean on the wall in the hallway, waiting. My eyes felt heavy, and the events of the night were just too much to take in at once. I was overloading with information, the thoughts spinning in my head making it throb dully until I would have killed for one of Edden's pain pills... and maybe a shot of tequila.

It didn't take long. Ivy was nothing if not efficient, and in a few minutes, she was darkly stalking past me, as if she never noticed me. Too tired to be hurt about it, and considering the circumstances, I pushed off the wall and followed her, a new nagging worry blooming when she went straight for her room. Just what did she have in mind? She obviously wasn't thinking clearly, and I dreaded what she might do in this sorry state of mind.

I had the answer when she almost ran into me on the way out, her sword in her clenched hand.

"Ivy, what the hell?" I asked, the fact her intentions were not instantly obvious proof that I was starting to slow down. "No." I protested.

"Rachel, get out of my way." She warned me quietly, her voice more threatening than any scream of rage. Her hair covered her eyes, but I didn't need to see them to know they were filled with pain and black as sin.

"No way, Ivy. I'm not letting you do something this stupid. It's suicide, and you know it. You're no match for an undead."

"Get. Out. Of. My. Way." She enunciated clearly and slowly, her teeth gritted so tightly I could see her jaw tighten.

"No." I repeated again, but what I lacked in vocabulary, I made up for in conviction. There was no way I would let her leave her in this state. She would only get herself hurt, or worse. "You'll have to go through me first. I'm not letting you do this."

My knees barely trembling (honest), I stood my ground, stretching out my arms on either side of me in a symbolic gesture of obstruction. I stood no chance at all in a physical contest against her, and had no illusions that she couldn't get past me if she really wanted to, but I knew she would never, ever hurt me, no matter how much grief she was in.

The vampire growled at me quietly, and the sheath of her sword groaned in protest in her white-knuckled grip. I watched, fascinated, as her right hand moved, as in slow motion, to the grip of her katana; I couldn't look away. She couldn't possibly... right?

"One last chance. Step aside now." She snarled the last word, drawing just a few inches of her sword to get her point across. She had never, in all the years I had known her, through thick and thin, scared me as much as she did now. Blood stained half of her face and made damp, shiny spots on her sweater. Her meticulously cared-for hair was in utter disarray. Her eyes were filled with a desire for violence and bloodshed that tore my gut apart, with fear, yes, but also bitter regret. There was a woman who abhorred violence, a gentle soul, for all her tough talk and black-eyed stares, and she had been shoved on the warpath. I couldn't let her, no way, no how. So I did the scariest, stupidest thing I did all night, and believe me, that says a lot. It was one of the most reckless things I had ever done, almost inconceivably dangerous.

I took a step towards her.

"You know you won't hurt me." I challenged her, my voice mostly steady. I had to get her to back down. "Ivy, look at me. You know me. You love me." She met my eyes, a sliver of doubt in hers. "And I love you as well. You won't hurt me." I swallowed, startled when her grip clenched around both sword and sheath. She was attempting to gather her resolve again. Not good. "Give me the sword, Ivy. Getting yourself killed won't help Skimmer. Please, listen to me, for God's sake!" My voice turned panicky when she drew the pixy sword fully. To my surprise, the blade shone a deep, angry red, much like... a pixy's wings?

_If I live through this, I'll have to ask Jenks just what the heck he did to that thing..._ I thought as my eyes widened in fear and I took steps back. There was no perfect stillness to her this time. The weapon in her hand shook badly, as did her whole frame.

"I couldn't help her, Rachel." Ivy's voice was quivering so badly she was barely intelligible. "If I had only been with her, this would never have happened, but I chose to pursue you instead, and she paid the price! But no more! Now I'll make this right. I swear to God that bastard will die twice tonight."

"What in Tink's contractual hell do you think you're doing?!" In a flash of pixy dust, and I'll admit, relief on my part, Jenks materialised between us, Just in the nick of time, as usual. "Ivy, put it away right now!"

"Jenks, watch it, please! Don't hurt her!" I begged her before his hand could reach for his own sword, the relief turning sour. I didn't think he would go as far as to kill her, but Ivy had been through enough as it was. She didn't need to add a few dozen cuts and the embarrassment of defeat to the night's pains.

"Just what happened?" He asked, flying slowly backwards towards me, his eyes never leaving Ivy. "It smells like a freaking slaughterhouse in here. What's with all the blood?" He didn't inquire whether or not the blood was Ivy's. He knew its smell, seeing as he was one of the few who had shed it.

"It's Skimmer." I answered him, keeping an eye on her myself in case my recounting pushed her in the wrong direction once more. "She was... attacked tonight, by an undead. It's her blood. Ivy got it on herself helping her." Ivy swallowed audibly, her eyes scrunching shut. I had my opening, but before I could do anything, Jenks surged forward.

"Ivy... Oh, for the love of Tink, I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Crap on my daisies, I'm an idiot." His sudden and abrupt shift to concern shocked her and me both. "Is she okay? No, of course she's not, but..."

"She's... lost. Confused." Ivy answer seemed more automatic than conscious. "Her wounds won't kill her, but... she's so hurt, Jenks. So scared. She..." Her voice broke completely. Silent tears fell down her cheeks, streaking the blood with pale little rivulets. "She wants to die, just so the fear will go away. She asked me... God..." She strangled on the last of her words, but I didn't need her to spell it out; Skimmer had probably asked Ivy to take her last blood and help her cross over into undeath. Damn.

"Ivy, look at me." Jenks demanded with a firm but gentle tone. "I know you're upset and angry right now, but it's not the time for revenge. Now is the time to ensure the safety of those you love. When the time is right, you have my word, I'll help you get your vengeance. Whoever did this to Skimmer will wish he'd never been born, I promise, but she needs you now. Put that sword away. It won't help you right now. She needs you here."

What did you expect? A "revenge won't solve anything" speech from a pixy? In your dreams...

Ivy's lost and confused eyes fixed on me before lowering to the sword in her grasp and widening in horror, as if she couldn't believe it was there. It clattered loudly to the floor, promptly followed by its gasping owner. I lunged for her barely a second later, wrapping my arms around her quivering body to hold her close to my chest. Her face immediately buried in the crook of my neck, the proximity of her fangs to my throat not even registering in my mind. She was in my arms where she belonged at last, and that was all that mattered.

"Shhh." I whispered to her, my hand stroking her hair in a soothing gesture. "It's going to be okay, I promise."

"I don't know what to do... Christ, Rachel, I don't know what to do!" She sobbed, her body in tremors. My arms around her tightened in almost excessive strength, but to her, it mustn't have felt like much more than a strong hug.

"You have to think, Ivy. You have to be strong and focused for her. What is it she needs right now?" Jenks asked her, hovering close, his warm dust sifting over both of us.

_Besides a very good shrink?_ I thought, completely out of my league, despite my relative experience with abused vamps. My stupid, stupid answer when Ivy had been the one broken by Piscary had been a cup of cocoa and a pillow to cry on. Ivy had pulled herself together mostly on her own, something that shamed me a little to this day. I hadn't strictly failed her back then, but still... I could have done so much more than simply being her reason to be strong.

"What she needs..." Ivy swallowed her sobs and looked up at Jenks, although she made no move to pull away completely from my arms. She inhaled deeply once, and her voice was almost steady when she spoke again. "She needs protection. She needs a master and relative safety, or her mind will never recover. Without those, it's not a matter of whether or not she kills herself, but when."

"Okay, that's a start." Jenks encouraged her. "Where do we find that? Who can take her in?"

"No one." Ivy grunted in frustration. "She committed the most forbidden act a living vampire can commit. She killed her own master. It's an instant shunning, practically a death sentence. No one will protect her, except... Maybe her old master would. Yes... yes, Nathalie might take her in. She started Skimmer's line long ago. It will be worth something to her, it has to be."

"Her?!" I was incredulous. Ivy couldn't possibly be considering handing Skimmer over to the monster that twisted her around in the first place? "Ivy, you can't be serious! You know what she did! We can't just hand Skimmer over to her again!" I strongly disliked, maybe even hated the blond vamp, but this was just too much to take. She had just been raped, and call me crazy, but returning her to the woman who had pretty much committed the mother of all statutory rapes during her teen years didn't sound like a good idea to me. How could this possibly help anyone heal?

"Weren't you listening, Rache?" Jenks interrupted me. "It's either that, or Skimmer tops herself. Beggars can't be choosers. Besides, you're one to talk, aren't you?"

I didn't understand what he meant, but somehow, I had a suspicion it had something to do with the rather harsh way Ivy pulled away from me.

"What the-" was as far as I got. She disappeared into her bathroom before I could say anything. The sound of her shower running followed impossibly quickly.

"Nice one, really. I don't know what you know about that vamp Nathalie I don't, but seriously, Rache... You think she needs you to second guess her like that? Especially now? She knows a lot more about what Skimmer is going through than you do."

"I know that." I replied, defensive. "But, Jenks, you don't know what Nathalie did to Skimmer when she was younger. It's nasty as hell, trust me."

"What Piscary did to Kisten when he was younger was pretty nasty too. Didn't stop you from trying to get his protection for Kist in his hour of need, did it?"

It was a low blow, and the pain of it was only made worse because it was absolutely true. I really wasn't one to criticise Ivy on her current course of action.

"Point taken." I muttered. I still absolutely hated this, just like I hated dealing with Piscary. Dealing with undead vamps was a lot like dealing with demons... except that undead vamps lied through their teeth and ate you instead of merely enslaving you and possibly selling you... It was like trying to bargain with a great white shark, honestly. Better do it from the good end of a lot of firepower.

"If it's any comfort, I doubt Ivy likes this any more than you do. Once Skimmer's gone, who does she have left, uh? Besides you and me? We're better than nothing, but neither of us exactly fits the bill as far as her needs are concerned."

I lowered my eyes in embarrassment. I didn't fit that bill... yet. I might, provided I could keep my foot out of my mouth long enough for Ivy and I to rearrange our relationship... but now was really not the time to think about that.

With a sigh, I kneeled to pick up Ivy's discarded sword and sheath. The burning red aura of anger that had surrounded it just a few minutes ago was gone. It was, for all its pretty engraving and beautiful colors, just a sword in my hands, but I was certain the earlier phenomenon hadn't been a product of my imagination.

"She's a beauty, isn't she, uh?" Jenks asked, landing on my shoulder to better admire his family's work. The pride in his voice was undeniable, and perfectly understandable.

"Yeah, it is. Tell me something. Why did it glow earlier?" I asked him. "What did you guys do to this sword, exactly? Besides the obvious?" I could swear the thing was... thrumming in my hand, very faintly. It seemed warmer than it should, as well. Not uncomfortably, mind you, but rather like the blade had just been held for a long time in very warm hands. Or maybe like it was alive...

"Family secrets, Rache. Can't share them." There was a teasing note in his tone, and I craned my neck to look at him. "It's purring, isn't it?"

"Purring?" Putting two and two together, I quickly figured it out. And blushed. "A purring sword? You gotta be kidding me... It reacts to Ivy's emotions, doesn't it?"

"Yep, it sure does."

Freaking great...

"So when it glowed earlier, it was because she was angry as hell..."

"And now, it's all warm and purring because even though you can be the dumbest witch this side of the ever after, well... I'm sure you get the point. She wuuuuvs you. It's tied to her. Think of it as a bit of her aura. Well, a bit of her aura that can slice someone in half quicker than you can say spit."

Wondering just how he had tied the weapon to Ivy in such a manner, I gave the sword a more thorough look. Upon closer examination, I realised the thread woven into the grip was not uniformly black, as I thought. Rather, there were faint, barely perceptible glimmers of gold in them that I had never noticed before.

"Ivy's hair?" I guessed, recognising the glimmers as Ivy's highlights, and Jenks acknowledged with a small nod. "That's dangerous, Jenks. It could be used to do some pretty nasty things to her, if it fell into the wrong hands." Hair was one of the most potent spell links one could use. If what I saw was any indication, the sword was tightly bonded to Ivy. Anyone who knew what they were doing could threaten Ivy's life very easily with it.

"You must think I was born yesterday..." Jenks sighed dramatically and shook his head in exaggerated exasperation. "Matie warded the damn thing, Rache. No one can harm Ivy through the sword." He stared at me intently for a few seconds, before adding in a much gentler tone; "You have my word."

Barely reassured, I swallowed back my worries, and sheathed the sword before entering Ivy's room to put it back on its stand. The faces on Ivy's picture wall stared at me as I did, one of them in particular catching my eye. Two young women, one tall, athletic and raven haired, the other honey blond, petite and delicate, their arms around each other, both grinning at the camera in the afternoon sun. It wasn't hard to recognise Ivy and Skimmer, and yet, the girl on the picture was so far removed from my mental image of the venomous, manipulative vamp that I had to look twice to be sure.

"This wasn't there before..." I said, unsure what I was feeling but definitely not liking it. I kept hearing Ivy defend the young Skimmer of their past in my mind. The sparkling blue eyes and honest, open smile seemed to dash all my selfish hopes that I was the best person for Ivy.

_How stupid is that? Up until tonight, I barely acknowledged her feelings, and now I can't stand that she might have once loved someone else at some point in her life?_ I felt like such crap. Maybe it was true, and Skimmer had indeed done more for Ivy than I ever had.

"It smells kinda musty." Jenks confirmed my suspicions. "My bet is she fished it out from somewhere or something. Hmm... Why so annoyed all of a sudden?"

"What?"

"Oh, Rache..." He shook his head, chuckling somewhat grimly. "When are you going to admit she means more to you than you let on?" He continued with the same gentleness he'd used earlier. "When her bags are at the door? Or when she's slamming it in your face, perhaps? You're running out of time here. Much as you hated her, Skimmer was one of the few people who helped her cope with your situation. I don't think Ivy can take much more."

"I know, Jenks." I sighed. "I'm working on it."

"Working on it by sleeping with Marshall?" He asked pointedly, more than a little accusation coming through. "Tinks' diaphragm, it's like fate has a bone to pick with her tonight, isn't it?"

"That... was a mistake." I begun with bubbling anger, but instantly cooled. My own damn fault. He was right. "She knows it. We had words earlier. We put it behind us."

"That's a small relief, at least." He turned his attention to the doorway. The sound of the shower that came through it stopped a second after he did. "Might want to vamoose. Give her a little space. You're shrouded in her scent here, too. Not a good idea."

Unable to argue with that, I stepped out just in time. Ivy, wearing only her robe, stalked past me as if I didn't exist. In complete silence, she shut the door to her room without so much as stealing a glance at me. Depressed beyond word, I leaned on the wall next to her door and let myself slowly slide down until I was sitting on the floor, crossed legged. I had an itch to bang my head against the wall until I passed out just so I could escape the mess of my life for a few hours.

"I don't like this either, Rachel." Ivy's voice startled me; I had expected she would ignore me for a while yet. "I don't need you to tell me I live in an ugly world, but we have to make due. It's the same hand all living vampires are dealt."

"I know. I... I'm sorry about what I said earlier. It was pretty hypocritical of me to get mad about that. I know sometimes you do what you have to do, and it's not pretty. I tried to do the same for Kist. Just... tell me you know what you're doing? You don't have my uncanny ability to do something incredibly stupid and somehow pull through. And let's face it; if you start acting like me at all, we're both screwed. Not even Jenks can catch both of us at once."

"I believe I do." She answered after a few seconds, her voice calmer than it had been all night. "If Skimmer still had a way to contact her, this would be simpler, but all her ties were severed when she moved here. I just need to get to this vamp club I know. One of Nathalie's emissaries hangs around there. He'll get a message to her on our behalf."

"And that's it? That's your plan? You were in that shower for three minutes. Where are your twenty contingencies? You had plenty of time to come up with them."

"This is a simple in and out, Rachel. I don't need an in-depth plan." Ivy answered with a hint of somewhat sad mirth. The sounds of a belt clinking and a zip followed. She was almost ready.

"God, I can't believe you just said that. I think you've been around me too... long... uh... this is... new, right?" I couldn't believe how dumb I sounded all of a sudden... or how much of an effect Ivy was having on me just by stepping out of her room and looking me straight in the eyes. I couldn't blame it on her clothes. Though the long leather duster she wore was unfamiliar, the rest of her outfit was fairly typical of her; black silk shirt with a generous-yet-tasteful v-neck collar, black leather pants that looked like they had been painted on her slim legs, and knee-high leather boots with more heels that were practical for those without a vampire's sense of balance, also in black. It was much, so much more than just the clothes. It was the woman beneath them, and I don't mean that I wanted to see her naked, not right this second anyhow, but rather that I was finally seeing Ivy in all her glory without my preconceived notions, finally admitting just how much this woman meant to me. Nothing had changed, neither me nor her, and yet... yet everything had.

"Uh, yeah, it is." She answered, chewing almost nervously on her lower lip, obviously feeling at least some of that stomach-fluttering I felt. Almost timidly, Ivy offered me her hand to help me up, and I hesitantly took it. She pulled on it, and either on purpose or accidentally, used more strength than necessary, making me stumble forward a bit... which brought me very close to her when she caught me. Swallowing, I gazed into her brown eyes, my hand still in hers. We were both silent, neither of us sure where our boundaries were anymore. There wasn't half a step between us, a tiny distance I felt utterly torn about. Should I get closer? Should I thank her and step back?

Ivy was impossibly still, barely breathing, a look of wonder, anticipation and unease on her lovely face. My eyes just kept sweeping her features, the line of her jaw, the mouth-watering plumpness of her lips, the hint of teeth that peeked between them, just the tip of her fangs showing. I wanted to be closer to her; I wanted us to crawl in bed together and forget this mess in each other's arms for a few hours. I wanted to see her asleep and peaceful with the knowledge I was beside her, that she was loved for all she was. But I couldn't give her that just yet. I could still give her a little something, however.

Between my socks and her booths, our usual half-head difference in height was more like a full one now, but I still managed to stand on my tip-toes just right to cover her mouth with mine. The kiss was soft and chaste, but it meant a lot.

_I love you. You're not alone. I meant it earlier._

One of my hands came to rest on her leather-clad hip beneath the long coat, the other finding the back of her neck and stroking the fine hair there. There was no tongue involved, just my lips brushing against the velvet perfection of hers. It was... the closest we could do to perfection for the moment. It was wonderful and so very right.

I pulled away after a little while when Ivy gently probed my mouth with her tongue, her intent to deepen our kiss obvious. With a fingertip, I kept her at bay without pulling away from our embrace, a smile both sad and mischievous on my face.

"No, that's enough. If you want more, you're gonna have to come back safe." The thought of losing her flitted briefly through my mind, making my slightly playful mood vanish. I couldn't. I thought I had lost her so many times already, and it hurt so much each time, I couldn't go through it for real. "Come back to me, Ivy. Promise me you will." I pulled her closer, pressing my forehead against hers and closing my eye against the flood of emotions.

"I promise." She whispered, moving just a little closer and putting her arms around me. Holding me, she gently nuzzled my hair, some of the tension that wracked her frame loosening as she did. We stayed this way for a little while, but it felt like barely a second to me before the first instant of peace we had as a couple came to an end.

"Will you watch over Skimmer for me?" Ivy asked as she reluctantly pulled away, her game face on. "She should sleep for a while yet, but when she wakes, it's possible she may try to hurt herself."

"I'll keep an eye on her." I answered with a nod. "Go. And remember your promise. No risks, okay?" I couldn't believe I, of all people, was saying that. But, hey, it was a strange day.

Not oblivious to the obvious irony of my demand, Ivy turned away after a small smile and a nod, leaving me alone with a emotionally-wrecked vampire who was in a world of pain and was borderline homicidal towards me on the best of days, which this one clearly wasn't. As if on cue, as soon as the sound of Ivy's car faded away, a whimpering moan rose from the living room, prompting me to take a look.

"Came here to gloat, have you?" Skimmer asked venomously in a quivering voice as soon as she caught sight of me.

Oh yeah. This wouldn't be painful at all...

A/N: A great many thanks to everyone who commented, subscribed, faved or even just read this story after clicking on the wrong link. You guys rock. Love y'all!


	14. Chapter 13

A/N: That was a hard chapter to write. I hope I didn't fail miserably...

**Chapter 13**

She was a bloody mess. There was no denying it, not even Dorothy "Models wish they were hot like me" Claymor could make the aftermath of an undead vampire attack fashionable. Her usual tanned complexion had turned grey, her blond hair hung, matted with sweat and blood. The bandage on her neck was still clean, but she was still in obvious pain when she pushed off the couch to a somewhat upright position, her once-pretty face scrunching up in a wince that she refused to let out of her throat. Her blue eyes, usually as deep as the ocean and sharper than a razor's edge, were pitch black, but she was miles away from pulling an aura. The confidence required had been ripped out of her along with her blood and dignity. What was left of her... it was so little of the snarky, strong and smart woman I had known it horrified me, no matter how much we disliked each other.

There was enough left of her to feel some semblance of pride, however, and she did bring her hand to her neck to hide it the instant my eyes touched it. She obviously didn't want my pity, or maybe she was ashamed.

"Came here to gloat, have you?" She managed to summon enough anger at me to hide the pain, as if she dared me to forget our mutual dislike and offer any comfort. She held herself high despite the pain, and even tucked away some of her befouled hair behind her ear, all the better to show her stormy eyes.

"Hmph. I don't like you, but I'm not that much of a bitch." I answered, crossing my arms, my voice neutral rather than gentle, as I wanted it to be. If her dark smirk at my reply was any indication, she definitely didn't want her bitter rival to coddle her. She'd probably spit in my face if I did. "Ivy asked me to keep an eye on you while she's out."

"She... she's gone?" Skimmer asked me, what little composure she had scrapped together slipping instantly, though the strain to keep hold of it showed on her face. Vampires are like that. They need to look up to someone stronger than they are, especially in times of distress, like say, a blood rape. Skimmer had obviously made Ivy her surrogate Master, even if according to her, Skimmer would need the real deal if she was ever to recover. I was still on the fence as far as that particular plan was concerned, but Ivy had my trust.

_Maybe I could volunteer to stay close to her all the time. She seems to get better when she's got a rage-on for me..._

"She's trying to get in touch with an old friend of yours. It shouldn't take long."

"Nat?" Skimmer guessed in an unsure voice, and I nodded; she half-scoffed, half-sobbed at my answer. "She's wasting her time. How could Nat possibly still want me after this? She already cut me off the instant I left, even though I had her blessing. Now I'm... leftovers. She has higher standards than that. Shut up." She cut me off the second my mouth opened, a compassionate word on the tip of my tongue. "I need..." She inhaled deeply, probably trying to steady herself, and ended up almost gagging. "I need a shower."

"You... I'm not sure that's a good idea. Better not get that bandage wet." I scrambled for an excuse not to let her out of my sight. Don't think I wasn't aware of how stupid I probably sounded. "Besides, I think you should probably be resting. Just sit tight and wait until Ivy gets back. She'll help you with that."

She didn't say anything at first, just stared at me with huge, eerie black eyes. I could barely see her breathing, and I couldn't fathom what was going on in her head, but what little I could see in her eyes... it was painful. She couldn't hide her distress, no matter how prideful she was.

"Rachel, I can still smell him." She finally answered, though her teeth were gritted so tight I could barely make it out and her head was lowered. "I can smell him on my skin and it makes me want to fucking rip it off! Please, I just... I want to feel clean again. Please..."

It was a struggle not to let anything show. _Fuck, fuck, fuck!_ I had promised Ivy I'd keep an eye on her, but what could I do faced with this? Her need was too raw, too heartfelt. I had no idea she could still smell her attacker on herself, but could guess it felt like salt poured in a gaping wound. I couldn't do the safe thing and wait. Maybe my emotional control was getting shot to hell and it was clouding my judgement, but I just couldn't ignore her and tell her to stay put.

"Okay." I gave in and nodded to her, and she made a sound that might have been conveying gratitude, had it come from anyone else. "But you're using my shower stall. That's final." I cut her off this time. "I'll get you Ivy's soap if you want," I offered, knowing it would probably bring her some sort of comfort to rub some of Ivy's scent on herself, "but you're showering in my bathroom."

"Why?" She hissed, looking at me like I was the single most annoying and offensive thing on Earth... which she probably did. There goes the kinda-gratitude...

_Why? Because I know where all my razors are, and I don't want you to get any one on one time with one of Ivy's._ I could make my bathroom relatively safe, but not Ivy's, hence, she had to take her shower in mine. See? Who says I can't plan ahead when I need to?

"It's easier to pull someone out of my shower, if something's wrong." I made up a reason, and an almost convincing one at that, now that I think about it. "Besides, it doesn't lock. It's safer if I can reach you in a pinch."

She sighed and muttered something I suspected was mean under her breath, but otherwise complied, her desire for a shower overshadowing her annoyance at me. She followed me to my bathroom, waiting outside while I quickly gathered everything sharp I could find, under the pretence of putting away my unmentionables (hey, better she think I was a prude rather than think I was actually worried about her), my bathroom serving a double function as a laundry room and being also filled with clothes of mine both clean and not. More ugly, ugly memories came to mind as I did, memories of that horrible night almost two years ago when Piscary had forcefully made Ivy his Scion and she had to clean his blood and hers from her ravaged body. It hadn't done much for her mind, however; somehow, I doubted it would do much for Skimmer's either.

I quickly whipped away the few tears my memories summoned; Skimmer might think my current distress was for her, so I did my best to stop myself from making any sound. It didn't change the fact I could see her from the corner of my eye as I rummaged through my cabinet; Ivy's dark, hunched figure, blood streaming along with water down her body in pale, pink rivulets, still and nigh-dead under a scalding spray she was far too numb to feel. Long delayed pain and guilt and sheer soul-rending anger washed over me, all the emotional distress I had been too overwhelmed by events, by the struggle to stay alive, to have time to feel back then. Now it was merciless, crushing my heart like a vice. My restraint, my mercy of Piscary, when I held his miserable existence in the palm of my hand, it sickened me now. I should have plunged that stake in his heart then and there for what he did to those I loved. Ivy wouldn't have suffered as his Scion for almost a year. Kist would still be here. Heck, even Skimmer would probably be better off, but no; I had chosen a moral victory over an actual one, and everyone paid the price.

_Christ, maybe Trent's not so wrong after all. Maybe there truly is such a thing as necessary evil..._ I thought, and knew instantly that it was the anguish talking, because "Trent" and "not wrong" could not be used together in the same sentence. I chuckled bitterly at my own inner joke, probably to the dismay of the blond vamp watching me.

"You better tell me you're not getting all worked up over me." Skimmer said snidely from the doorway, the weight of her gaze on me just now registering as I hunched over my tiny sink, trying to get my breathing under control. I wasn't sure how much of my mini outburst she'd observed. "I might just puke."

"Not a chance." I replied curtly, gathering a few pairs of stray undies before I forgot my pretence. Hey, at least they hid my razors from view... "All yours."

I needn't have bothered with my pseudo deception, honestly. Skimmer's still-black eyes were riveted to her reflection in the bathroom mirror, staring straight at the mess of her neck, as if she could see beneath the bandage and gaze upon the grisly wound on her neck.

"I'll be outside." I told her after clearing my throat, hoping to snap her out of her contemplations, whatever they were. She began to undress, her back turned to me, without even shooting me a glance. "I don't know what do for you about clothes. You don't want to put those back on." The clothes she was discarding one by one were partly torn and covered in blood, and I could imagine they smelled absolutely repugnant to her.

"The last drawer." She shot over her now-naked shoulder, her entire back bare. Lean muscles played under her skin as she unclasped her bra and tossed it on the pile, where it was soon followed by her skirt. She had no panties on, for Ivy's benefit, I quietly hoped; better that than having them ripped off by her attacker.

"What was that?" I snapped out of my once over of her very impressive body (not that I was checking her out; she had pretty nasty bruises all over her back, and I wanted to make sure Ivy hadn't missed any injuries... honest.). Her stare was half quizzical, half annoyed, and she gestured behind me as she repeated herself.

"The last drawer in Ivy's dresser. Do I need to draw you a picture?"

Blink. "Oh." Blink. "Right." Blink. Blink.

_Skimmer has a drawer in Ivy's room._ _Skimmer_ has a drawer _in Ivy's room_. Skimmer _has a drawer in _Ivy's _room_.

Does it make me horribly shallow to be having a surge of rabid jealousy in a moment like that? Yeah, that's what I thought. I'm a horrible person, but let me tell you that searching Skimmer's sleepover drawer was definitely punishment enough...

Honestly, it was an exercise in self-esteem, especially considering how fresh my mental image of her gorgeous, if battered, figure was. The woman was as fond of white as Ivy was of black, but the apparent, elegant simplicity of her usual apparel belied the ludicrous amount and variety of lingerie she had stockpiled for Ivy... Let's just say that it was enough to make me worried the vamp wouldn't be all that satisfied with our intimacy, if this day ever ended and we ever got around to it. I wasn't prude or anything, but I didn't have the confidence to wear half the naughty stuff Skimmer had in there. There was little doubt about the kind of activity she had in mind when spending the night; I didn't want to know what that long narrow bulge tucked in the corner was...

Still, I managed to get my hands on fresh, almost functional underwear, jeans and a white silk shirt. Skimmer's cream coloured, vamp leather boots were salvageable, at least, so I didn't have to worry about footwear. I left everything inside my bathroom for Skimmer to find, and resumed my watch after checking in on her. Judging by her voice when she answered me, I could tell she was quietly crying while out of my direct line of sight, but otherwise she sounded as alright as she could be. Still, I stuck around outside, so I could go in quickly enough if anything happened. The only thing she could do to hurt herself was to use shards of my mirror, and I'd hear if she broke it.

_Man, what a night... _I shook my head to clear some of the bone-deep weariness that was settling in. _I'm going bipolar for sure._ Grief over Marshall, pure, seething anger at Lee (I kicked myself for forgetting, yet again, to warn Ivy about him), joy over Ivy and I finally seeing eye to eye, anguish, both fresh and old, over what happened to Skimmer... I was getting very, very tired of the downs and occasional up, and so ready to call it a night, but a little voice in the back of my mind told me Ivy and I weren't out of the woods yet, not even close.

"Do you need a hand in there?" I couldn't resist offering and peeked into the bathroom. She was dressed, but her back was to me and I couldn't see her wounded neck. "Want me to help you change the bandage?"

"I'm fine!" She half turned to yell at me, nearly hysterical. "Will you leave me the hell..." She seemed to realise mid-sentence that she was totally loosing her cool, something that was unacceptable in front of me, and turned to face me, a hand on her neck. "The blood in my veins is a millennia old, Rachel. Between it and Ivy's saliva, I heal quickly." She stated a little dully. In a somewhat jerky motion, she ripped off the soggy gauze, and turned her head as if to show of what was beneath it. There was still a wound there, but it didn't look half as bad as it did half an hour ago. It was impressive, if eerie, reminding me of her earlier displays of power against Ivy; Skimmer truly had terrifying untapped potential. If she'd had half of Ivy's training, she would be unstoppable to anything living, short of a demon.

"Better to cover it again anyway." I insisted stubbornly. "Just let me give you a hand, and I'll get out of your way until Ivy gets back."

"Fine." She sighed and sat down on the toilet, and I smirked inwardly; I'd guessed right as to what might motivate her to listen to me. I quickly fetched the first aid kit again and got what I needed from it before kneeling before the blond vamp. Her hair was still damp from the shower, and she had no make up on, making her look younger and much messier than usual. The tattered remnants of her attitude and confidence she still held close to herself, like a drowning man holds on to a life jacket, and the look she gave me before she allowed me to look at her neck again was annoyed and cold.

"Okay, don't move." I demanded, taking a quick look before I dressed the wound again. It looked okay; the real wounds would show themselves in the years to come, long after the scars on her body had healed. I couldn't do much about those except not treat her with pity now and not letting her cause herself more pain.

_Maybe I could take the bait and give her that fight she's been fishing for_... I thought in annoyance as her nose scrunched up in disdain at having me this close to her.

"God, how can Ivy stand your stench..." She muttered under her breath, making me twitch and sigh. I wanted to say the same about her, but honestly, she didn't smell bad at all, much as it sickened me to admit it; her pheromones were probably mellowing me a little. Besides, vamp always thought people they cared about smelled great, and vice-versa for those they disliked. She probably wasn't lying.

"Could you pretend to want to help me here?" Truthful or not, I was getting a little peeved anyway...

"I can't help it." She replied with her trademark venomous sweetness. "Your smell doesn't mix well with Ivy's. At all."

"Well, if I remember correctly, you said I smelled like any other witch just a few hours ago. Or are you telling me every one of my kind stinks?" I sighed again and tried to cool before I slapped her. Damn, I hated the woman. The way she got under my skin was simply preternatural, and coming from an Inderlander, that says something. "Just try and work with me here, would you? It'll be over quicker that way, for both of us."

She growled quietly, and glared at me a bit, but otherwise complied, letting me dress her wound at long last. It wasn't as neat and professional as Ivy's work, but at least it held.

"There. Was that so painful?" I asked innocently as I stepped away, but Skimmer had gone completely quiet, her breathing so still I almost jarred her before she made herself pass out.

"Painful, Rachel?" She breathed very, very quietly. "Yes. Yes, I'd say that was painful." Her dark eyes fixed on mind, not a trace of emotion in them. "Ivy kissed you recently, didn't she?"

"How did you-?" My eyes widened in surprise, and my hand shot almost guiltily to my lips. She couldn't have that much of a sense of smell, could she? There was no way she could smell Ivy on my lips when I smelled like her all over... right?

"She did. Don't lie to me, she did." She snarled, her small body seemingly taking half the available space. She was getting riled up, and I was getting worried. My bathroom was much too small for both me and an upset vampire who could snap my neck like a twig. Hell, as far as I was concerned, the church was too small for that.

"Skimmer, calm down." I warned her. "I don't want to hurt you anymore than you already are."

"Oh, is that so? Then why didn't you stay the hell away from Ivy when I moved here, uh? Why, when Ivy doesn't even interest you? If you'd just done that, everything would have worked out between us." She stood up, and instinctively, I grabbed hold of the line out back. My scar was starting to tingle, but not enough to stop me in my tracks this time. I was ready for her, whatever she tried.

"What have you ever done for Ivy?" She asked me, her pain drowned out by anger. "I mean, besides neutering her and confirming those ridiculous notions that there's something wrong with her just for being a vampire? What can she possibly see in you that's not in me? What's so great between you that she would reject me over it? Me! I know her as if I'd made her, Rachel! I know her better than she knows herself, and unlike you, I love her!"

"I love her too." I defended myself, standing my ground against the anguished vamp. Backing away would be a sign of weakness, one she would latch on to and dominate me with. "I'm what she-"

"I don't believe this... You actually dare say you love her?! You made her change everything for you! You made her turn her back on herself, on who she is! She'll always be a vampire, Rachel, but you, you made her into a miserable one!"

"Piscary made her miserable, not me." I protested. What she implied was preposterous. Ivy had been messed up long before I met her. I had little merit in how far she'd come, seeing as she had made those efforts for me, but I certainly hadn't pushed her into anything.

"Piscary made her lose control and hate herself. I was the one who taught her control. Me! I taught her how to live with it, even enjoy what he made her into! I thought I'd have a chance to finish what I started in high school when I moved here, but no, I was back at square one. Because of you, her head was filled with those ridiculous ideas that sharing blood is a horrible and ugly act. I'd say it's hypocritical, if I remember the way you witches have sex. What? Are you telling me you and your unimpressive male lover didn't do a power pull? Go ahead, tell me it's not exactly the same as sharing blood. I dare you."

"I tried to share blood with her." I blushed a little as she hit the nail on the head, but I tried to ignore the elephant in the room. She was right, though. Marshall and I had done a power pull, and it had been such a frigid moment it should have tipped me off that it was a bad idea to go any further. She had a point that it was a very similar, if less dangerous, act. How she knew about it, however, was a mystery. "We couldn't make it work."

"Yes, you certainly did try, and God, you have no idea how often she cried to me after she bit you. You made her loose so much progress towards her own acceptance in such a short time... I couldn't believe my eyes. I almost had her convinced she wasn't a monster before you decided to screw her over."

"I screwed her over? We were both pretty stupid that time! She wanted it too much, and I didn't want the whole deal. Compromising just didn't work, but how were we supposed to know that without trying first."

"No, indeed you didn't want all of her, and still you dare tell me you love her? If you do, it's the love one has for a pet, nothing else. You only ever took the parts that suited you from her, never the whole person, even if she is so completely devoted to you. Ivy deserves more, so tell me what the hell is between you that's worth all this bullshit! I sure as hell can't see it."

"I don't know!" I shouted and almost shoved her away from me, the beginning of an aura she was trying to pull making me shiver. "I don't have a clue what's between us! I just know that we can't help wanting to be around each other, okay?! I know that when she bites me, she not only takes my blood and my aura, she touches something so deep in me that our auras become one! I don't know what the hell it means, I just know it's there and neither of us wants to let it go!"

Skimmer abruptly fell silent, as if I had just slapped her hard.

"Your... your auras m-merge?" She stammered, her whole body quivering. "You... you lying little bitch! It's a myth! It can't happen, I know it! I'm sure of it!"

_Okay, she knows something I don't..._

"I'm not lying to you." I replied carefully, my training dictating I lower myself into a half crouch and ready myself to fight. "Believe it or don't, it's the truth. You can deny it all you want, but there is something wonderful between her and me."

"_Between_? You think this has anything to do with you? Stupid little girl, so self-centered..." She shook her head, her voice quiet now. "It has nothing to do with you. Anyone Ivy cares sufficiently about could merge their aura with her during a bite. It's such a rare phenomenon, it requires such trust and love that we all believe it's merely mythical. But it's not. It really happened, didn't it?" She gazed at me with huge, shimmering eyes, the doubt and fear in them soul-deep. I couldn't, for the life of me, tell if she wanted me to acknowledge or deny what had happened between me and Ivy.

"Yes" I answered gently after a long pause. "Yes, it did happen. Our auras merged as one. She bit me another time last fall. We had no idea what it meant." At least, I sure didn't. Maybe Ivy had a clue after all. Maybe it explained her fascination with me somehow...

_No, it's the other way around. We can make this... thing, this wonderful thing, happen between us because she cares so much about me._ My head was almost swimming with this new tidbit of information. I knew Ivy cared, that she was fanatically devoted to me, but this was apparently the Holy Grail of vampirism... and we had it. Holy crap.

"She found it. She found what she was looking for all along. And it's not me." Skimmer sounded utterly broken. It should have tipped me off. I didn't spot the grim resolve in her eyes until it was too late.

She rushed me like a raging bull, but not in an attempt to hurt me. She simply wanted me out of her way, and doing just that she made my back slam against the wall, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. My arms instantly shot up to block any follow up attack, but she only walked past me and out of my bathroom, leaving me sprawled on the floor with stars dancing before my eyes and my heart beating in my temples. I could hear her heading for the kitchen, and gathered my will to push off the cold tile floor. I followed suit, half stumbling, ley line energy filling my chi a bit more harshly than I was used to. It was just a precaution, an instinctive one, but it proved useful when I walked in the kitchen just in time to see Skimmer press our huge knife to her throat.

"No!!" I cried out, my hand reaching for the blond vampire. It was pointless, of course. I couldn't reach her before she slit her own throat, and at that point, no amount of magic or vampire fluids would save her. She was already gone... or she would have been had I been human. As it was, my hand was merely focus for the whip-thin thread of ley line energy I snapped, with more accuracy than I thought I was capable of, at the utensil in her hand. The knife flew away from her at an insane speed and buried halfway through one of our cupboards, the handle quivering about as much as the vampire standing, stupefied, in the middle of my kitchen. I didn't waste any time.

It was my turn to lunge up to her with every ounce of speed in my body. I reached out for her wrists and managed to twist her arm in a submission hold that made a cry of pain and surprise erupt from her throat. Before she could react, I had her bent over the island counter, every move flowing into one another with the ease of years of practice. The overhead racks rattled when I shoved her down, but considering her vamp strength, I couldn't afford to be gentle or considerate with her. My right hand, along with most of my weight, kept her small body pinned down while my left went searching for my splat gun, resting in its usual hiding place, my old, dented spell pot. I had just found the edge of it and begun pulling the weapon out when Skimmer completely stopped struggling, going utterly still beneath me.

"Skimmer?" I asked cautiously, using the hand that held my splat gun to push away some of the hair that obscured her face. She looked blank and barely alive once more. "Will I need to use this?" I gestured within her field of vision with the splat gun.

"No." She whispered. "Yes. I don't know." Her whole face scrunched up in pain that had nothing to do with me hold on her. "What do I have left, Rachel? I came here running after my dream girl, and I lost it all. My job, my friends, my family, my Master... I lost them all, and for what? This?"

"You don't know that." I relaxed my grip just a little; I needn't have bothered holding her at all, to be honest. She was done, completely defeated. "Ivy will be back soon. She'll have news. Skimmer, you don't know that. You gotta have faith that things may work out."

"Yes, I do know. I've been so stupid. So goddamn stupid for so long. I'm just getting what's coming to me now, that's all.

It was rape talk. Victims who blame themselves for what happened to them are sadly common, but unfortunately for this one, she didn't have a nice specialist to help her get out of that circle of self-recrimination. She was stuck with me. I didn't want to say she was screwed, but I sure thought it.

"You should let me do it. It'd be more merciful than letting me go on like this."

You hear that cracking sound? That was my heart breaking. Over Skimmer. Weirdly horrible fucking day...

"Skimmer, I know you're hurting right now, but it'll end eventually. Pain always ends, no matter how impossible it seems. You will recover. You can move on from this.

"I can't. I can't. I'm no good anymore. I screwed everything up so bad. I can't deal with the payback."

She was drowning, in despair and pain, and I couldn't stand by and just pin her down like this. I strongly disliked her, true, but it felt so inhumane. I couldn't pretend her situation didn't strike me to the core any longer.

"You never screwed up. You saved Ivy, remember? You saved her when no one else could. You killed Piscary for her."

"And for what? I'm not good enough for her. I can see that now."

_Man, this isn't working..._

"I took her from you." I said in a sudden burst of inspiration. She hated herself right now and tore herself apart with self-loathing. I could shift that focus to someone else. "I'm the one who made her give up on you. I'm the one who led her one for a year. I'm the one she was with tonight, when she should have been by your side, keeping you safe. I did those things, Skimmer, not you. It was my fault."

I could feel them, increasing with each of my words, the tremors coming from deep within her body. Her eyes swam more and more as emotion took her over, ripping her apart so she could, I hoped, better put herself back together.

_Hate me, Skimmer. Hate me. Not yourself, me, with all your heart._

"I HATE YOU!!" It came out like a dam bursting, a tremendous wail of agony from the bottom of her soul. Her whole body shook with the strength of her huge, wracking sobs, as she somehow found enough breath to keep repeating those words over and over again. Tears she had tried to hide from me overflowed, spilling down her cheeks and the slope of her neck. "I hate you so much."

I still took the broken vamp in my arms. She still let me take her. We were beyond our usual bickering and dislike. I held her, and she held me, both with desperate strength. I stroked her hair while she repeated her mantra, her voice muffled by my chest she had buried her face in. She cried and cried and cried, until she had no tears left and she stilled against me, her head tucked beneath my chin.

"I love you, Skimmer." I admitted truthfully, surprising myself as much as her. "You saved Ivy when I couldn't. I may have misjudged you, but at least I'll say thank you for that. I'll always be grateful. Always."

I planted a kiss on her forehead, and pulled the trigger of the splat gun before she could utter a word.

She jerked once as I shot her point blank with a sleep potion, and breathed a sigh of relief on her way down to the floor. I caught her and eased her down, letting her head rest on my lap as I kneeled. Her breathing quickly settled, her muscles relaxed one by one. She looked peaceful at last, if only for a moment (eight hours and counting), and I couldn't resist stroking her hair. We would never be friends, even if we saw each other again after this was over, which I doubted, but for now... for now, we were okay, I think.

Ivy looked pretty bewildered when she walked in on us like that a while later, but she still thanked me once I assured her Skimmer was unharmed.  
"What's the news?" I asked her while she effortlessly scooped her ex off the floor and carried her into her bedroom. "Got in touch with that guy you talked about?"

"Yeah, I did." She answered from behind her closed door. She wasn't any more forthcoming than that.

"Aaand?"

Ivy walked out of her room, sans Skimmer, after a long glance at a tucked in and peaceful blond vamp. "And I got an answer. Nathalie agreed to take Skimmer back into her Camarilla."

"That's... good right?" I inquired, a little worried by Ivy's nervous shiftiness. "Please tell me that's good..."

"It's... good, I guess." She answered, refusing to meet my eyes. "Except for the part where she just got on a sun-proof jet to come and get her."

I blinked. Blinked again. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You mean she's actually coming here? In Cinci?" Ivy didn't reply. She didn't need to. Her silence said it all. "What are we supposed to do?"

"_I'm_ supposed to get Skimmer to a secure location downtown and wait for her." I didn't miss the emphasis she put on I, and apparently, I could be loquacious without moving my lips too, because she picked right up on my intentions. "No. You are staying right here where it's safe. Nathalie is not happy about this whole ordeal."

"Then that's another reason I'm coming with you. If you're facing an angry Master vamp, I'm sure as hell not letting you do it alone."


	15. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

A/N: Warning! Ravy naughtiness ahead! This fic just earned its M rating!

"What is this place?" Those were the first words out of my mouth when I stepped out of Ivy's Mercedes and out into the mid-day sun. We were in a deserted parking lot in front of one of the most non-descript building I had ever seen, about the furthest thing I would ever associate with a vampire safe house. Several stories high, it looked like any other lower-middle class apartment complex, not unlike the one I inhabited before moving in with Ivy in our church. It looked clean and well maintained, but like I said, very plain. "Are you sure you've got the right address?"

"I'm sure. This is the place." Ivy answered me from the other side of the car, where she was busy getting a sleeping Skimmer out of the car. A small redwood disk hung from the blond vamp's neck, a little something Ceri had helped me devise after Kist's death. The charm, while it didn't make her sleep per se, would keep any nightmare she might have at bay. I'd made it in the hours since I had knocked her out, and made sure it was around her neck before my sleepy-time potion wore off. She hadn't woken at all since, quite the blessing for her still frail sanity. "The last floor is the lodging for guests of honour for the master's. Don't let the looks fool you."

"If you say so." I fell into steps behind her, in silence, getting the door for her since she could hardly manage it with an armful of petite blond vamp. Inside, the building would have looked deserted had it not been scrupulously clean, not a speck of dust or a spider web in sight. The elevator was old but quiet, carrying us to the top floor without breaking the silence between Ivy and I. All the time, her gaze was on Skimmer, unspeakable regret and sorrow etched on her face. All I could do was grip her shoulder and be silently supportive. I had no words that seemed appropriate, and it broke my heart to see her so.

The doors parted, letting us through into corridors that looked much like the ones we had left behind downstairs. My runner training made me take note of the door numbers, the layout of the floor and the location of the emergency stairwell before I followed Ivy suit. She led us to another unassuming door that I opened for her, and followed her in, stopping dead in my tracks before I could take two steps.

"Woah..." Was all I could say. We stood in a luxurious apartment that would have made most interior decorators green with envy. It was all made in whites and glass and jade, everything buffed to a shine, every surface smooth and reflective. Huge bay windows let in all the sunlight you would never expect to see in an apartment intended for vampires, windows I could swear were not present when I looked at this place outside. There had to be an illusion protecting the building from outside observers. Sweet. "Don't let the looks fool you? I'll say."

Ivy didn't reply, just nodded and walked off into another room with her still sleeping ex, leaving me to take in the sights. There was a main room that doubled as a living room and a kitchen area, both of which put the ones we had back home to shame. For the kitchen, that said something, truly, but the ultra modern, ultra stylish place was as beautiful as it was cold. I could imagine that Ivy's old place had been something much like this. I could guess she preferred the church too, as I did. I wouldn't have swapped them.

Ivy was sitting on the couch in the living room, in front of the single most enormous TV screen I had ever seen, when I finished my once over of the place, her eyes staring off into the distance, looking at nothing. "How is she doing?" I inquired, sitting down next to her, much closer than I would have once dared.

"She's still sleeping. Thank you so much for that amulet, Rachel. It was a Godsend." She didn't look at me, not even when I laid my head on her shoulder, the whole right side of my body moulded against her.

"You're welcome. Uhm, is this too much?" I asked as she stiffened against me but unwilling to pull away unless she told me it was. She had pretty much fixed herself, damnit, and I could damn well hug my... my girlfriend if I wanted to.

_Oh God, this'll take some getting used to..._

"No. I'm just not used to... this. I'd almost given up." She answered me. "You're... you're serious about this, aren't you?" Her voice was the most fragile whisper of grey silk I had ever heard from her, all of her vulnerability, all of her hopes and dreams laid bare for me to embrace fully or crush once and for all. "You didn't say... and do... what you did just so I wouldn't leave, did you?"

"No." I reassured her, tightening my grip on the strongest, most fragile woman I had ever met. "No, no, of course not. I'm here to stay, Ivy. With you." Her cheek pressed tentatively against my hair, and she finally held me, her arm snaking around my back gently. She was almost timid, so far removed from Ivy the vampiric sexual predator...

"Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that..." She trailed off, her mien submissive.

"That I messed around with you for over a year?" I chuckled bitterly, and buried my face in her neck, feeling a faint vibration coming from her. "I wouldn't blame you. God, I'm ashamed, Ivy. Skimmer said things last night, things that rang so true. I've hurt you so bad, haven't I?"

"You didn't make me your pet, Rachel. You were my friend. Maybe I needed that more than... a lover, for a while at least." Ivy began. "But when you helped me that night when I became Piscary's Scion... I fell for you. It didn't get better when you put your life on the line to put him away. You were just being you, recklessly doing the right thing, as you always do."

"Recklessly doing the right thing? You're really putting it nicely..." I scoffed.

"You don't know how rare that's been throughout my life." Ivy silenced me. "If Skimmer is so angry, it's because she cannot understand that you didn't try to seduce me, it just happened. She wants me to simply accept what I am and live with it, even enjoy it. The way she sees vampirism is... difficult to explain. She finds sharing blood beautiful, but she doesn't consider it an act of love. It's more about sensations and seeing how far we... she can go. And believe it or not, it's an act of respect, an acknowledgment of who we are, as vampires, so it's no wonder she believed what she did."

"She said... she said I confirmed your notion that something's wrong with you, just because you're a vampire. That... is it true?" It pained me to ask. "I never meant it like-"

"No." She cut me off once more. "Don't say that."

"Oh, God, I totally did. You're just being nice again."

"Rachel..." She sighed and held me a little closer. "I can't lie and pretend your rejection never hurt me at all. It did. You made me doubt my sanity at times, pining after you the way I was. But you weren't ready, and I don't think I was either. I might have... hurt you, or worse. You're not Skimmer. I couldn't be with you, not the way I once was. I'm better now."

"You never stopped trying to fix yourself for me, did you?" I asked, the answer already provided by our proximity and her more and more relaxed stance. "Not even after last Halloween."

"I... No. I never did. I couldn't."

"Because of what happened? Skimmer... kinda flipped out when I mentioned it."

"Yes, I suppose she would. A bond such as ours... It's such a rare thing to happen, most of us believe it's a myth."

"So you knew what that was? When our auras became one?" I felt her nod. "Your love, your acceptance, my trust, is that it? That's what brought it about?" She nodded again. "Why didn't you explain it to me? If it's so deep and beautiful, and you need it so badly..."

"I needed you to figure it out for yourself, Rachel. If I had told you the nature of what was between us... I feared you would feel pressured somehow, or that the choice had been made for you. You had to understand what you feel for me first or it would have cheapened everything between us."

"You're kind of a hardcore optimist, you know that?" I chuckled. "I can't believe you never gave up. I thought you were such a cynic, but I never... Hey, don't be embarrassed it's a nice side of you to see." A ridiculously cute blush was creeping up on her face, and with a smile, I planted a kiss on her reddening cheek.

_There goes the getting used to part..._

"Skimmer is not a bad woman, Rachel." She continued after clearing her throat and shaking off the surprise at my sudden display of affection. "She's... a vampire who loves being a vampire, with all it implies. She loves her lust for blood, and she loved mine. She didn't want me to change, not when she could give me all I needed, had I chosen to remain as Piscary made me. When I was younger, she helped me quite a bit, as I've told you. She didn't warp me. She taught me most of the control I had when you and I first met. Without her, I probably would have ripped your head off when I got free of that chair four years ago."

There was a nostalgic look to her now, one I could guess was mirrored in my face. During our first (very rocky) week working together in the I.S., I had knocked her out with a spell and tied her to a chair. To add insult to injury, I had painted the word "idiot" on her fingernails, then used her own cell to take picture, threatening her to send it to all our colleagues if she didn't sign off on my runner recommendation. A silly thing to do, considering she easily broke the whole chair apart and was at my throat a heartbeat after I woke her up. Still, it got me some of her respect when I showed her I wouldn't be pushed around, and she'd started taking training me more seriously after that. She played quite the part in making me the runner I was today.

"Yeah." I acknowledged with a smile. "I can't believe how far you've come."

"I know I have." She agreed with a hint of a shy smile. "Skimmer... She's... much the same she always was, only more confident, more experienced and sharper than ever before. I'm the one who's changed. I can't be with her anymore. I think I knew it all along, ever since she came back, I just didn't want to admit it. I still love her, and she loved me, but I made choices I stood by. I want to change, and she wants the girl she met in high school, or at least the woman that girl should have become. I wish I didn't have to break her heart this way, but I'm not that woman and... I'm with you now." There it was again, that same vulnerable hope, riddled with her uncertainties. I wondered how long it would take for me to mend the holes I'd put in her confidence with all my dilly-dallying.

"Yes. Yes you are." I assured her. "And I like the woman you are. You had a rough life, and I don't care that I don't "know you like I made you", as Skimmer put it. You're you. You're my Ivy. It's enough for me."

I looked up to her, happy to see her smiling. "I think I like the sound of that." She stated quietly, just enough moisture in her eyes to make her absolutely stunning.

"Good, because I'm not letting you go anytime soon." I said, and rested my head back on her shoulder. "My Ivy."

_My Ivy. My Ivy. Yeah, it just rolls off the tongue. I can definitely get used to that._

We stayed like that for a while, just holding each other, my head on her shoulder and her arm around me, in perfect comfort and companionship. It felt irresistibly right to finally be close to her like this, touching and hugging without awkwardness; I couldn't help but think that anyone who wanted to take this away from me had better be ready for a hell of a fight.

_Like Saladan... _The thought, sadly, startled me away from the lazy warmth of Ivy's side. It was about time I mentioned it to her.

"What? Rachel, what's wrong?" Ivy asked immediately, sensing the shift in my mood and blood pressure the instant it happened.

"With everything that's happened, I completely forgot to tell you. Glenn called me last night. The evidence in the case against the dealer we caught got snatched. The F.I.B.'s I.A. thinks it's an inside job, and worse, that he was the one who pulled it off."

"What?" Ivy uttered, her brown eyes widening. "But he could be their poster boy. Why would they think that?"

"Because he tampered with evidence to give me back my splat gun. He didn't want me to go without my weapon, not after the incident. He thinks it was a trap, and I think he's right. Somebody tried to off me. I think it's..."

"Lee Saladan?" Ivy finished my sentence and drove completely speechless. I thought for sure she would say "Trent"... "Don't look so surprised. I've had my eye on him for a while now. Ever since he came back from the Ever After, he's been completely out of control. At the rate he's burning through them, he won't have any friends left before winter is out. You don't have to do anything about him." She assured me. "He's digging his own grave, and he's very eager to lie down in it."

"What do you mean?" I asked, troubled by the tone of her voice. "Ivy, you can't take him on by yourself."

"No, you're right, I can't. However, the whole Camarilla will soon enough, if he keeps this up. The Cinci underworld has been very stable for a long time. It doesn't take kindly to interlopers, especially outsiders who have no claims to leadership around here. If he tried to have you killed, well... I won't be responsible for my acts once we move against him." There was a gleam of violence in her eyes, a familiar one that only seemed to appear when I or someone she cared about was in danger. It was a fierce and merciless thing, one I didn't really like seeing on her face, and yet just a few hours ago, I was the one ready to charge head first and take Lee out. I was the one getting protective of Ivy. Irony, thy name is Rachel. I would have to remember not to smother the ferociously independent vamp...

"Just remember I'm there too, okay? I've got your back, and I've got a score to settle with that little dipshit too. No one hurts my girl and walks away."

"Deal." Ivy said, a respectful yet amused look in her eyes.

"Deal." I responded in kind. "Still, I think we should make a little something for Glenn's troubles. He did smooth out everything for you. Maybe you could make him a jar or two of spaghetti sauce?" I suggested half-selflessly, hoping she might make some extra for us. Ivy was a hell of a cook, even if she didn't like cooking in the first place. Her meatballs were to die for; if she hadn't been so high-minded, she might have blackmailed me into a blood balance with the promise of a pasta dinner. "He got you out of trouble, even if you two don't care much for... each... other? Ivy?"

Boy, I'd thought she had been blushing earlier, but now? Now she was turning scarlet, her face flaming red from her neck to the root of her hair. Embarrassment didn't even begin to cover it. She wouldn't even look at me.

And just like that, a few tiny pieces came together.

Ivy had recently fed when she was injured, but she hadn't come home in her usual miserable and snappish state. Instead, she had simply volunteered to accompany me on my run. On the other hand, in the hospital Glenn had been completely tired, something I still might blame on the paperwork he had to go through if I didn't remember that mysterious itch he had, on his collarbone, where a tactful vamp would have bitten him so the mark would be out of sight. They had managed to have a conversation while I was asleep, quietly enough that I had been none the wiser, even though usually I had to duck for cover whenever they "talked". He had gone through a lot of effort to make sure "we" would be out of trouble, even though Ivy was truly the one in trouble, and one short call to Rynn Cormel would have taken care of that. He knew that, and yet he hadn't done so...

_Oh. My. God._

"Y-you?! With... Glenn?!" I almost screamed, and Ivy, if that was even possible, grew even redder. "I'm... I can't... How the hell did that happen?! I mean, he's human, of all... No, I dated a human, forget I said that. You... Just... how did this happen? Were you guys... are you guys even still together?" I was babbling, but hell, I was entitled to be. Getting struck by lighting had nothing on this.

"Rachel, please! Be quiet!" She pleaded through gritted teeth. "I'll tell you, but please, Skimmer is still asleep. Let's try and keep it that way."

I promptly shut up, but try as I might, I couldn't get my eyes back down from "saucer" back to "normal" size. Ivy with Glenn... un-fucking-thinkable!

"It happened maybe a week after you started getting lessons from that demon of yours." Ivy began, still very, very red. "For a while, after that last time I bit you, I tried to abstain from blood, because the thought of biting someone else was just unbearable, but eventually I..." _Had to go?_ I completed for her mentally. "Anyway, I set up a date with a..." _Fuck buddy?_ "friend, at a club in the Hollows, but it fell through. He stood me up. I stayed to try and get another hook up for a while, but it just wasn't my night. I could probably have picked someone up if I'd made the effort, but... well, you were just too fresh in my mind. I called it quits and headed home. On my way, I spotted his car in front of a bar. He was on our side of the river for some reason, so I checked it out. It turns out he was trying to drown his sorrow, and doing a lame job of it."

"Why? What was going on?"

"His girlfriend left him. It's... his business. I'm sorry." She cut me off before I could ask more. "Anyway, I walked up to him. He was out in the Hollows hiding from his friends and his father, didn't want anyone's pity. I was still reeling over you, and Skimmer was locked up and wouldn't talk to me. Neither of us wanted to be alone, so..." Ivy sighed. "We spent the evening talking. I suggested he take me home before we parted, and he agreed. We had sex, and while we were together, I bit him. It was... better than most other partners I had, emotionally speaking. It started as a one-night stand, but we were doing it again just a few days later. We dated for a few months after that."

"Why the past tense?" I asked, feeling more than a little jealous. Sue me, but Ivy had only "dated" three people, as far as I knew. Two of those were Skimmer and Kist. "What happened?"

"He was starting to feel more for me than I could give. Skimmer believes you can love more than one person without betraying them, and maybe I do as well, but between you and her, I... guess I don't have that much room in my heart. It wasn't fair to him for me to use him that way."

"And yet he had a vamp bite on his shoulder when you were in the hospital." I couldn't keep all the blatant resentment from my voice. I could see something coming that I wasn't sure I could face.

"We maintain a blood balance, even if we don't sleep together anymore." Ivy admitted after a long silence, and my face fell. "Sometimes... sometimes I just couldn't stand it anymore. I needed the blood I took to mean something, I needed to bite someone I actually cared about. It happened that night. I knew you needed a back-up, and I couldn't be edgy or bitchy while I watched your back. It helped me focus."

"I see." I said neutrally, feeling like the world's biggest coward. Glenn, a human who knew so very little about Inderlanders, who was, when I first met him, terrified of a garden variety veggie, who wouldn't take an amulet from me, that Glenn, had a blood balance with Ivy. Even after Ivy had gone sexually berserk on him the first time he met her. It baffled me. I was the witch, I was the one to whom Ivy was devoted, and I'd been scared off her for a while. Glenn was a norm, a freaking cookie.

_Damn, that's harsh... _I thought, unsure where the insult had come from. I was getting so damn upset over this out of nowhere, and I didn't like it.

"You're jealous." Ivy said without a hint of interrogation.

"I'm... yeah." I admitted, aware of how awkward a reversal this was. Usually Ivy was the one whose blood boiled whenever someone looked at me. It was fine by me when she sated her needs with people she hardly cared about, and who hardly cared about her. Weird how I started foaming at the mouth whenever it became actual romantic involvement...

"I'm sorry you feel this way," Ivy said a little coolly, "but I'll need blood if we're to be together. I can't stop practising and let myself touch you. It wouldn't be wise to proceed otherwise, Rachel."

"I... yeah but... I mean, couldn't you get your blood from... me?" I hadn't finished saying those words that already Ivy's eyes had turned black, and she turned her face away from me to hide them. "Ivy?"

"I thought you said this wasn't an option." She whispered, her voice raw with emotion. "You said you couldn't... let me bite you again."

I slowly extended my arm and pushed her face towards me. Her eyes were shimmering.

"I did. It was a gut reaction, Ivy. A stupid choice that hurt us both, that I made because I was scared as hell. I want to accept all of you." Very carefully, I brushed my thumb against her lips, pushing the soft plump flesh aside to expose the very white teeth beneath. Her small fangs caught the light, glittering like the flutters of remembered pleasure they evoked in the pit of my stomach. My eyes stung as well, not over the loss of the sensations Ivy could summon from me, but the loss of the perfect closeness I had denied us both. "You're ready now... and I am too. Besides, don't you need blood right now?"

"I... Rachel... are you sure about this?"

Very softly, I blew on Ivy's neck, making her stiffen and shudder. It was all the invitation she needed. An instant later, she was gently pushing me on my back and crawling on top of me. I gasped as she did, a pure reflex; as much as I loved her, Ivy was still kind of intimidating when viewed from this angle, but fear took a backseat in my mind once she started kissing me, deep and hungry.

"Are you sure?" She panted, only managing to tear her mouth off mine after long minutes that left my lips (along with other parts of me) tingling. "You don't have to do this, Rachel. Tell me you are."

"I'm sure." I panted back, the pressure of desire seeping from my demon scar building in me growing unbearable. "Now shut up and kiss me." I pulled her head back to me. "Bite me, Ivy. I want you to have this. Please, bite me." She did, very eagerly, her tongue pleasantly invading my mouth and rubbing against mine, stirring desires of a different kind than the lust for her bite I felt. Though Ivy wasn't touching me, besides our body pressed together, I couldn't resist the urge to touch her. The hand that wasn't holding her very mouth pressed against mine started roaming her back, until it found the hem of her shirt and slipped beneath it. The skin there was soft and smooth, the powerful muscles beneath it contracting as I caressed it and Ivy arched into my touch.

"Oh, God..." I breathed out erratically as Ivy shifted her attentions from my mouth to my jaw and began kissing her way to my throat. "Oh, God, oh, God, oh GOD!!" My voice reached a squealing crescendo the second her lips touched my scars, lighting them, and me, with the most exquisite fire, arousal both sexual and pheromone-induced mixing in an unreal sensation that made my back arch, making me grind against Ivy. The liquid heat pooling between my legs spilled outwards from my core, radiating through my flushed body like an erupting volcano, summoning a primal sound of pleasure from deep within my throat.

"S-sorry." I barely managed to stammer before Ivy touched me again the same way, and my hips surged forward once more. "Ivy, I'm s-sorry, I can't help m-myself."

"No... Don't stop... Rachel, don't stop." She pleaded, pressing her thigh more firmly against me, making me keen in bliss.

"Ivy... good God..." I moaned, giving up controlling my body as Ivy resumed her exquisite torture. She hadn't even bitten me yet. Had I an ounce of clarity left, I would have wondered how I could possibly survive when she did. The raw pleasure would surely kill me.

I probably wouldn't have cared any more than I did. Nothing mattered but the next movement of our little dance, nothing but her teeth and her lips and her tongue. The ecstasy built, kept getting more intense, deeper, and still, it built, with no end in sight. I was covered in sweat, panting and moaning, all but drooling as every cell in my body felt alive and aching for more, for her all over me, inside, outside, everywhere.

And just when I couldn't take it anymore, when the wave started pulling me under into an orgasm that threatened to tear my soul from my body, that's when she bit me. Our auras blended into one instantly and for a second I hung in limbo, pure, flawless love and acceptance flowing from Ivy's heart into mine. The beauty of it made my eyes water, a choked sob erupt from my lips. Then, there was only pleasure.

Instinctively I opened myself up fully to her, my orgasm surging out from me and directly into Ivy's core, before bouncing right back through our bond straight into me, even more intense than before now that Ivy's pleasure had merged with it. I clung desperately to her, my one and only anchor against the rolling wave of sensations and emotions that flooded me. Her own hands held my neck unmoving against her mouth, her body and mine as impossible to distinguish as our auras.

The first thing I noticed when I came down a bit from the fluffy, pleasurable cloud Ivy had sent me straight to Heaven upon was the _very _pleasant feel of her tongue lapping up the last of my blood from my neck. I wasn't sure how long I'd been out of it.

"Ivy?" I mumbled.

"Here." She answered very quietly, rising up from her cleaning to look me straight in the eyes. "How are you feeling?"

"I'd say "good", but that feels like the understatement of the century. Really freaking awesome is more like it." I chuckled. Her pheromones were so thick in the air they made me high like a sweet drug, but there was no way the warmth that settled in my heart, the comfort of Ivy's weight over me had anything to do with them. "You were right, you know. I think I'm going to kick myself a quite few times for taking this long..." The hand I used to cup her cheek felt heavy, but I had a feeling it had everything to do with the aftermath of our passion, and not blood loss. "Did you take enough? I don't feel like you took much."

"Yes, it was sufficient. I'm not sated, but I don't need to be. Trust me, I'd act like a cat in heat if I was."

"You mean you'd rub against me and purr all the time?" I grinned. "That doesn't sound so bad."

"Maybe not, but I can't take this much blood from you regularly. It's a blood _balance,_ Rachel. You're not supposed to be hurt from it."

A drop of blood was caught at the corner of her mouth, and I collected it with my thumb while caressing her lips with it, only to earn myself a playful lick from my vampire. To say she looked good would have been another understatement. Smiling, open, and at long last at peace with herself, I felt I could have gazed upon Ivy's face for eternity... or all afternoon, at least.

"What's up?" She asked me, and I realised I'd been staring for who knows how long.

"Nothing. You're just really gorgeous, that's all. And awesome. And dreamy." I answered and pulled her down to me again so I could kiss her, soft and tender as I felt. Our auras were still fuzzy around the edges, and the intimacy and tenderness felt absolutely wonderful. Having front row seat to see Ivy's soul was nothing short of perfection...

... But then I realised something that might rain on our little parade.

"Ugh... Ivy?" I said with an embarrassed quietness. "I just realised I... maybe came a little in the same clothes I'm going to meet a master vamp in..." I could shower, of course, and smell mostly "presentable" for her, but, well... I needed a change of shirt. And pants. And bra. And panties. Definitely panties.

_Look on the bright side; your footwear is perfectly fine!_ I thought flippantly. I just knew Ivy would use this as an excuse to get me home and safe, far away from the big bad vamp.

"Don't worry about it. I brought you a change of clothes." Ivy answered, a mighty smug smirk lighting up her face when I shot her a completely bewildered look. "Don't look at me like that. I didn't plan this."

"Then why did you... and when did you get some of my stuff?! It's still my room, Ivy!" I protested right up to the point where she silenced me with a kiss.

"They're not your clothes, at least not technically." She explained. "I keep a few outfits in your size in my closet, just in case you would ever need to really pass for my Shadow or Scion. I would have mentioned it earlier, but..." She gave me a heated look. "You know. You decided to take care of me."

I made a non-committal sound. Maybe blushed a little.

"They've soaked in my scent by now. Wearing them will send a clear message to Nathalie that you're mine. It's just a deception." She added when I made a face. "If she believes you're mine, she's less likely to go after you."

"Yeah, I know." I said glumly.

"You're not my Shadow, Rachel, and that's how I want it. You never will be one, either mine, or anyone else's. I promise."

"I know, it's just... it's like the demon stuff, you know?" I wasn't whining. I was expressing my discontent over social status. Totally different things. A badass runner like me doesn't whine. "People always judge me because of crap I didn't choose, whether it's the scar, or the smut on my aura, or Al tearing down half the city to get a fucking point across!"

"I know, Dear Heart." Ivy said with perfect calm, the fond sobriquet that used to scare the crap out of me now sending a thrill down my spine. "But know that those who make the effort to know you respect what you've done. Remember that, because those are the ones who matter. Jenks, Alice, Ceri, Keasley, David..."

"You. Can't forget you." I piped in, my ire soothed. It's hard to stay moody when you're floating on a cloud of relaxing pheromones, or covered with a living vamp that only seemed to see the best in you. "All right, so you're a lifesaver. Care to get them while I shower?"

She smiled and kissed me softly before reluctantly getting off me and walking out of the apartment, giving me a great backside view while she did. With a goofy smile that was completely inappropriate for the circumstances, I strolled into the only room I would exchange with the church's equivalent. The bathroom looked like something out of a movie, all marble and chrome, with an enormous Jacuzzi tub that looked fit for royalty and mirrors broader than twice my arm span. In the corner was a more functional but no less elegant shower stall, and with a bit of regret that I couldn't enjoy the more luxurious bath, I headed for it, taking in my reflection as I did.

The last time I had seen myself in the mirror after Ivy had bitten me, I could hardly move from blood loss. I'd been pale and sickly, half dead; I looked like a Shadow nearing the end of her usefulness. The woman I saw in the mirror now was very different. She freaking glowed. There was a spring to her step, a twinkle in her eyes, and a red mark on her neck that didn't bother me one bit. I liked what I saw. I felt lighter now than I had in years, possibly than I had ever since my father died. I felt _whole_.

I took my clothes off, images of Ivy helping me do it flashing wistfully in my mind. She'd blown me away while we were fully clothed, and I couldn't wait to find out what it would be like naked in bed with her. I mean, she had those long pianist fingers, after all, and she was so skilled at listening to every whim my body had...

_Maybe I should make that a cold shower..._

I always hated cold showers, so screw my thoughts of screwing Ivy, I turned the spray up to scalding heat, just the way I liked it. The bathroom soon filled with steam, and to my regret, the extra layer of Ivy's scent I'd gotten on me while we were together drained along with the hot water and soap.

"There you go." Ivy made me cry out in surprise when she dropped off the bag containing the clothes, quiet as a mouse, as usual. "They're things I might wear, so I hope you like them."

"I'm sure it'll be fine. Ivy? Aren't you going to shower too?" I asked her innocently enough as she turned to leave. She made a vague affirmative sound. "Join me?" The shower doors were frosted glass, and I saw her vague black shape freeze and slowly turn towards me. As in slow motion, she began undressing, my heart quickly picking up speed with each of the thuds of her clothes hitting the floor. It was racing by the time she opened them and stepped into the fogged stall with me.

"You look like a fish with your mouth hanging like that. A very sexy fish." She purred. How was I supposed to react? Ivy looked like a swimsuit model. A gorgeous, healthy swimsuit model. I knew she was fit, and after last summer's heat wave, I'd seen her in pretty skimpy outfits, but it was a whole other ballgame to be alone naked in a steamy shower stall with her. I couldn't help but wonder if I'd bitten off more than I could chew...

"Thanks..." I answered, the joke she'd made flying high above my head, making her chuckle.

"I'm glad you like my looks." She said without making fun of me further, proving once more that she was a better woman than I. In her shoes (or body, as it were), I'd have had quite the laugh at her expense. "You're no slouch yourself." Her eyes slowly travelled over every inch of me, her irises thinning as she took me in. "Even better than I thought."

"Thanks..." I repeated. The distinctly mocking quality of her small fond smile made me shake my head in the hope of snapping out of it. "Have you... ever been with a witch before?" She shook her head negatively. I was torn between relief and jitters. I mean, every male apparatus I'd seen worked on me just fine, even vamp ones, so logically, we weren't so different, right? "See anything different?" The only thing I'd noticed at a glance was a neat, obviously trimmed patch of hair at the apex of her thighs that I didn't have. I didn't have a clue how different or similar we truly were.

"No." She replied. "But I'm looking forward to finding out." Very gently, she turned me around and wrapped her arms around me, her body encircling mine. Affectionately, she began nuzzling me, my hair, my cheek, my throat too, which sure got my heart thrumming even faster, even if I knew she wouldn't bite me again. "Later."

"What?!" I stammered, my knees almost giving way in the face of my sudden disappointment. "But this is... this is just perfect, Ivy!" I whined, especially peeved since she had started caressing my naked midriff. "I mean, we've got this awesome bathroom all to ourselves here! You can't be serious!"

"Rachel, I can't. Not right now, not with Skimmer like this just a few feet away. And I don't want it to be here. The first time we have sex, truly have sex, I want it to be in our home, in my bed, without any rush or pressure. I don't want it to be a moment stolen from a master vamp. Do you understand?"

It might have been easier to understand if she hadn't been caressing me. Just saying.

"The sun won't go down for hours; she has no way to get in here..." I argued; it's not like we were really rushed. "Please?" I pleaded. "Pretty please with me on top... or bottom, or sideways, or however you like it?"

"No." She stayed firm, making me huff in annoyance, and a bit of frustration. "When we get home."

"You're just getting even..." I pouted. Ivy's chest pressed against my back started vibrating. Damn vamp was laughing at me now.

"I already told you I don't resent you for taking the time to figure it out. Now, can I scrub your back?"

As it turned out, since we did have a few hours before the sun went down, we decided to take a nap, seeing as neither of us had any sleep last night, and the bite had finally relaxed both of us enough to allow sleepiness to catch up. Without any nightclothes on hand, we ended up together in the second bedroom, both of us naked as the day we were born. Ivy, her lack of faith in me disturbing, made me promise not to try and get her worked up, but while I was initially annoyed and maybe a bit hurt, she did spoon me the second she slipped under the thick covers. Her wonderful scent wrapped around me, making my eyelids heavy as her relaxed pheromones went to work on me. Sleep came quickly, deep and dreamless.

* * *

_I forgot how well you sleep in a vamp's arms._

That was the first, stuffy thought that flew through my head several hours later when I awoke, much more rejuvenated that a normal nap could have left me. Ivy's arm was still firmly around my middle, her warm, soft and naked body still pressed against me. I felt glorious. There was no other way to put it.

"Evening Sunshine." Jenks said from the bedside table across from me. I did a double take. "What? Surprised to see me?"

"Jenks?" I hissed, mindful of the still sleeping Ivy at my back. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I snuck in the car, what else? Aww, did you hope I wouldn't see this? You gals are so cute, I could fart fairy balls." He mocked me, making me blush. For a second, I had an impulse to pull away from Ivy's embrace and come up with some excuse for my compromising position.

_No. You know what? He can shove a prune up his ass and make jam._

"Bugger off, Jenks." I whispered dismissively and settled myself back against Ivy.

"Damn straight I should bugger off." Jenks laughed, but rather than being snide and mocking, that one was warm and friendly. "Tinks' titties, Rache, I can't believe it. It's for real this time, right?" He came to hover very close to my nose, until I had to look at him cross-eyed. "Right?" There was a vague threat in his voice. Was he... no, surely, he wouldn't...

"Off course it is." I answered, mildly insulted. His eyes were narrowed, and I got the clear sense that he was gauging me.

"You better keep it in mind if you don't want me to pix your underwear for the rest of your life."

I couldn't believe this. "Are you giving _me _your stamp of approval for dating _Ivy_?" The backwardness of that sentence knew no bounds.

"Yep. You better hope you don't disappoint, Rache."

"But I..."

"You messed around with her head and her heart for how long now? You're the one I'm worried will break her heart in the end. Maybe she's forgiven you, but I sure won't forget in a hurry. Besides, Ivy already proved how much she cares about you. You still gotta earn your street creds."

"I... I know, Jenks. I'll try." I muttered, feeling ashamed.

"Good. Don't forget, or you'll find that there's stuff worse than sand to have in your lady parts. Now, she's about to wake up, so I'll leave you two alone. Be careful not to bang the headboard against the wall, 'kay?" With that lovely parting bout, he darted out of the room, cackling maniacally.

"Stupid bug..." I muttered. With a sigh, I gently entwined my fingers with those of Ivy's hand. Sure enough, her grip on me soon tightened, the cadence of her breathing picking up as she awoke. Her lips pressed to my shoulder in a sweet, good evening kiss. "Hey, you." I whispered after turning to face her. Her eyes were still heavy and sleep-filled, her smile was easy and welcoming, and she looked... adorable. Not the usual term I would use to describe her, but it was an appropriate one.

"Hey yourself." She replied, moving into my touch as I caressed her face and brushed away strands of her sleep-tousled hair.

"Are you purring?" I asked. There was this vibration about her chest that I had felt a few times in our recent encounters, and it was picking up again.

She nodded. "Yeah. Usually, only the young ones do that, but I never outgrew it. Is it weird?"

"Weird? That's... just about the cutest thing ever, Ivy." I smiled and kissed my purring, sleepy vampire, making her sigh in hapiness and the vibrations intensify. If it wasn't for the sun lowering over the horizon, I could have spent all night pressed against her. Unfortunately, soon enough, the quiver of sundown crept up on her, and I knew we were out of time.

"It'll be over soon, Rachel." She soothed me as we parted to get dressed. "Then, we can go home."

"It can't come soon enough." I replied.

She fetched the bag of clothes for me again. Inside was a pair of leather trousers, a blood red silk shirt and a matching set of underwear that was just a bit too frilly for my tastes. Everything was the home brand of Veronica's Crypt, much too rich for my blood, but Ivy ignored my half-hearted protests and simply watched me get dressed, her eyes just dilated enough to betray how much she enjoyed doing so.

"What do you know about Nathalie?" I asked her while I slipped into clothes that wouldn't fit me better had I chosen them myself. "Anything freaky?"

"I met her once long ago, while I was in high school." Ivy answered. "It was spring break. Skimmer and I stayed at her family's property up in Beverly Hills. Nathalie joined us for a few days." There was a slight unease in her voice. I was willing to bet there was more to that story, but I didn't press her for details. "She's... smart, Rachel. Very sharp. Incredibly old, too, and you don't survive that long without serious willpower and strength, so don't underestimate her. I know it's not your style, but don't cross her, okay? No matter what. She picks up Skimmer, gives me my slap on the wrist, and she leaves."

"Okay." I agreed, subdued, though I knew in the back of my mind that if she picked a fight with me or Ivy, I'd hit back and wouldn't pull punches. We were protected; Nathalie was a visitor. In her territory, she could as she pleased, but here, she had to play by rules. Rule one was, no one touches my girl.

Dressed, I walked up to her, taking her face in my hands and planting a deep kiss on her lips. "For luck." I said simply. "It's going to be fine, Ivy."

"A car just pulled up. Two people in." Jenks cut in, landing on my shoulder. "Might want to get your game face on."

Time seemed to slow down as we waited before the door for the master vamp and the one I assumed was her Scion. I stood by Ivy's side, my stomach fluttering, my palms a bit sweaty.

_It'll be okay. It will be okay._

There was a knock at the door. Ivy was in motion first, opening it to reveal the two women behind it. One was a stunning, raven-haired beauty who could probably melt any heart had her face held any warmth. Her mid-length black hair was pulled into a neat, top ponytail, out of her eyes. Her green eyes were piercing and coldly focused, like twin honed blades. She was lean and tall, and dressed in black leather of similar quality as the clothes Ivy and I wore. A single blood red pendant hanging from a silvery chain around her neck was the only piece of jewellery on her. I would have put her in her early to mid twenties, although with vamps and charms, one couldn't trust their eyes to gauge age.

The other was not strictly ugly, but next to the mystery woman and Ivy, she looked almost plain. Other than her gorgeous, plump lips and her glorious mane of chocolate brown hair, there was very little of note about her. Still, she got points for clothing. Her pale, cream coloured suit fit her much too well to be anything but tailor made. Unlike the other woman, her grey eyes were expressive and piercing, betraying the sharp intellect behind them.

"Ivy." The more ordinary-looking woman spoke with lukewarm cordiality. "It has been quite a while."

_Oh, crap on toasts..._

Okay, so there's no hard and fast rule when it comes to vampires, but usually, the more normal they look, the more dangerous they are. If this woman was indeed Nathalie, well... I was getting very, very worried.


	16. Chapter 15

A/N: *Blank* *The writer ran away*

Chapter 15

If Nathalie noticed Ivy's short respectful bow, she showed absolutely no sign of it. As soon as her distant salutations were done, she stalked past us, heading without pause towards the room Skimmer was asleep in. Any illusion of plainness or normalcy vanished the instant she was in motion; a human, or an inderlander living under a rock, might still have mistaken her for a really graceful norm, but she walked with such mesmerizing, predatory grace that my mind could only scream "vampire, old and pissed off, back off and stay out her way" at me. Sound advice. Whether I would listen to it would probably interesting to see. Judging by the way she ignored me, maybe I wouldn't have to do anything. Yeah...

_Now why don't I believe that?_

For now, I was happy enough being completely ignored by the old, insanely powerful undead. Her simple presence was enough to leave a wake of bitter cold behind her, like she carried around her own personal creepy freezer and had forgotten to shut it. I didn't want to know what being the object of her anger when she was focused on it would feel like. She hadn't taken a glance at me and I felt the same way I did when I pissed off Ivy enough for her to pull an aura.

The other, prettier woman on the other hand, did take a good long look at both Ivy and I, her eyes narrowing when she rested her gaze on me. They looked like twin emeralds, cold, hard and beautiful, surrounded by long, thick eyelashes and thin, sculpted eyebrows, and I got the uncomfortable feeling that they saw a lot more than the surface of my being. However, before I could say anything, she got herself in motion her followed the one I assumed was her mistress further into the suite.

"Jenks?" I barely whispered, hoping she couldn't hear me. "What do you make of her?"

"I don't know, Rache." He answered, a peeved annoyance that I felt was inappropriate to our current situation in his voice. "It's the damndest thing. She just smells like Ms Freeze-a-lot over there. Tink's diaphragm, can't that woman keep any of her hunting aura in her body? I'm freezing my ass off here. Everyone likes a dramatic entrance but come-"

"Could you focus a little here?" I cut him off, scowling. "What do you make of her?"

"Um, right. So, my nose says vamp, but something's off. Like I said, she smells just like Nathalie. It's like she has no scent of her own. Dunno what it means, Rache, but I think we're out of our league."

I could only agree with him there. Whatever that mystery woman was, there was a good chance she was a fair badass; a vampire such as Nathalie wouldn't choose anyone short of formidable as her Scion. And her Scion the black haired woman definitely was; her steps were practically as graceful as Nathalie's, though she couldn't rival the undead's sheer aura of predatory hunger. Hers was the grace of a dancer, not a prowling panther. Odd. Not a vamp, maybe?

Ivy fell in step behind them, her head lowered, her mien tame. Quietly, I did the same, walking up to her so I could briefly take her hand and squeeze it in comfort. Odds were that Nathalie would wake Skimmer up, and I doubted it would be a pleasant experience for anyone in the room, Ivy in particular.

Nathalie was already by the bed when we entered, her eyes fixed on Skimmer's pretty face, her expression unreadable, and more than a little confusing. Was that pain in her eyes? Regret? Anger I could believe, but if I didn't know better, I'd have thought she was on the verge of tears.

"What a fool I was to let you go." She whispered, her voice softer than a lover's caress. "Oh, my Skimmer... How could you ever forgive me for this?" Slowly, she lowered herself on one knee, her long, tapered fingers gently threading through the sleeping vampire's dark golden locks. The scene was almost touching, but knowing what that... creature had done to freaking teenagers throughout the past centuries made it revolting enough to turn my stomach... which was apparently not the opinion of the awakening Skimmer.

"Nat?" She asked in a very small voice, her still-black eyes hazy and unfocused. "Is that really you?"

"I'm here, my love." The undead answered instantly, taking the trembling hand Skimmer extended towards her and pressing it to her cheek. "I'm here."

Skimmer was crying her heart out a heartbeat later. Two heartbeats later, she was wrapped up in Nathalie's embrace as barely coherent sentences tripped over each other on their way out of her mouth. Nathalie didn't seem to mind; she merely kept stroking her hair and let her former lover, companion, whatever Skimmer had been to her, she let her empty her heart.

Concerned, I shifted my focus to Ivy, unsurprised to see her biting back the tears that some of the broken woman's words invoked. I discreetly moved to take her hand, but I noticed Nathalie's Scion from the corner of my eye, so quiet and erased her presence had slipped my mind. My hands clenched into fists with the frustration that any comfort I offered my hurting girlfriend would be perceived as a sign of weakness.

"I thought you didn't want me anymore." Skimmer whimpered. "You never contacted me, you never sent anyone."

"Shh." Nathalie kept repeating in a low, soothing tone, rocking the blond living vamp like a scared child, a metaphor that turned very inappropriate when she pressed her lips gently to Skimmer's and kissed her, slow and soft. "That is ludicrous, my love. I was so foolishly prideful, I could not forgive your eagerness to move here. I should have made the first move and brought you home."

Before their kissing could deepen, she dipped her head in the crook of the blond vamp's neck and steadily sank her long fangs into her throat. The undead took a single, deep pull off Skimmer's veins, her sobs quieting and dying out quickly, before taking a long look into eyes that finally constricted and returned to their usual ocean deep blue.

"Welcome back to the fold, Dorothy." Nathalie declared with a sad, yet fond look on her face, her palm against Skimmer's cheek and her thumb brushing away her tears. Her grey eyes hadn't even put on a little black from the bite. I'd never even heard of a vamp with such serious self-control; she made Piscary look like a wannabe. Yikes! "Welcome back where you belong. By God, I will never let you leave my side again." She murmured, embracing Skimmer once more before nuzzling her throat, her nose brushing against her neck, her cheeks, her jaw, her ears, leaving marks of her scent that any undead would recognise as clear "back off" signs. "We're going home, I promise, just as soon as I have had a word alone with our dear Ivy." Nathalie's smile and tender manners vanished as she looked up and glared at Ivy, her voice sending daggers of ice through my chest to pierce my heart. It took most of my self-control to keep myself from protectively stepping in front of Ivy. "She has a lot to explain to me."

"Nat." Skimmer grabbed the undead's arm as she rose, a hint of panic in her voice. "Please, don't... do anything rash. Please, for me." By the time Skimmer spoke, Nathalie had already overloaded my creep-o-meter. I might have just kissed for standing up for Ivy. "Nat, please." She kept on pleading for her former lover's safety, even as Nathalie began to make a rumbling, displeased growling at Ivy. The raven haired vampire's face betrayed little in return; she met the older woman's gaze without wavering, but her face was lowered in submission. If Nathalie even noticed me, she showed no sign of it.

"Angel, take her downstairs and wait in the car." Nathalie commanded to her Scion in a gentle voice, breaking eye contact with Ivy at last, though that didn't make her relax at all. "I'll have a word with Ivy and meet you there. Call Stephen and tell him to have the plane ready. We're leaving as soon as I'm done here."

"Nat!" Skimmer almost shouted in desperation.

"I won't hurt her." Nathalie finally relented. "Much. That's as good as you will get, my love. Go with her. I should not be too long." She demanded before Skimmer could add anything.

"Rachel?" Ivy's voice was at my ear. Her hand wrapping around my wrists made me jump; I'd been too focused on Nathalie to notice she had shifted her attention to me. "Don't interfere. If not for you, then for me."

Only after she followed Nathalie and her merry band out of the bedroom did I notice the fingers of my hand she had gripped were wrapped around the grip of the splat gun tucked in my pants.

_I can't help it_, I seethed quietly, the resentment against the undead vamp burning in my veins, _I'm not letting her hurt you. Period._

"I'm with you, Rache." Jenks whispered once Ivy was too far to overhear. "Just cool it for now. Don't blow your chance to strike. If the shit hits the fan, I've got your back, but for now, just watch and wait."

"Thanks." I muttered half-heartedly, trying very hard to keep my stride even and my desire to stake Nathalie hidden. After a last kiss and hug shared with Skimmer, the undead led Ivy into the living room, her eyes having yet to come and rest on me. I wasn't exactly offended; I'd gladly tear her apart, but I could do without her noticing me. Strange, maybe, but Strange is my middle name... well, my other one anyway.

"I must admit, I'm quite disappointed in you, Ivy." Nathalie began, once more dropping the temperature into negative Kelvin through her sheer presence. "Do you care to explain how my favourite, the one I entrusted to your Camarilla, so she could be with you specifically, came to be brutalised and abused this way?"

"It was my fault, Nathalie." Ivy spoke meekly, her hands clasped in front of her, her usual pride laid down for Nathalie to trample beneath her high heels. The undead was circling her, making my trigger finger itch. "I failed to protect her. I let her leave my side last night."

"Indeed." Her circling tightened, until she was close enough to touch Ivy, her hand coming to rest on Ivy's hip. "Your failure goes without saying, but what intrigues me is this; what could have you so distracted that you would fail to realise her vulnerability outside a correctional facility." With a predatory, twisted smile, her fingers trailed upwards. "Do you dare lie and tell me this did?"

Ivy damn near doubled over when Nathalie firmly drove her fingertips into her side, right on the spot she had been shot just a week earlier. Her cry of pain rang in my ears, and before I knew it, I was shouting "Stop it! Get the hell away from her!"

That did it. Finally, Nathalie noticed me, her eyes traveling up and down the length of my body, piercing, it seemed, skin, flesh and bone to see deep within me. "No, of course not. There's the true reason. The infamous Rachel Morgan." She turned her gaze back to Ivy, her hand still possessively resting on her hip, and murmured in her ear. "To think I once thought highly of you. This is beyond words, Ivy. How you could choose this status-less little witch over the direct descendent of a thousand year-old bloodline baffles even my understanding."

"Hey!" I interjected again, this time drawing the splat gun clearly into the open and sighting her up. I was just so sick of this, of seeing Ivy bow before people to whom she was infinitely better. She didn't have to sit there and take it, not this time. This sick bitch didn't have free rein to hurt her, and by God, I wouldn't stand by and let Ivy take undue punishment. "I'm talking to you! Get away from her now!"

"No lineage and, it seems, not much for brains either." Nathalie scoffed, ignoring my cherry red weapon as she turned her attention away from Ivy and let her go. Ivy almost sagged in relief now that Nathalie was no longer probing her side, but there was no sign of it in her face. Her black eyes that found mine were begging me to back down, even as I held my head high against the vampire that began to circle me. Do note that despite the splat gun I was scared shitless at this point; I was just too angry to notice. "Are you really so foolish, or are you simply eager to share your lover's pain?"

"Go ahead." I dared her. "Try me. It'll be interesting to see you deal with the diplomatic fallout." Nathalie froze, one of her graceful eyebrows rising in... interest? God, I hoped that wasn't it. I _really_ didn't want to pique her curiosity. "You're a long way from home."

"Indeed?" She drawled, the sound rich and smooth like butterscotch.

"Indeed." I repeated, sarcastically mimicking her elegant tone while pretending I wasn't getting pleasant gooseflesh all over. God help me, I didn't want to like this. I preferred when she was cold and distant rather than warming up to me... and as on cue, Nathalie responded in the very last manner I'd wanted; she tossed her head back and let out a warm, full-throated laugh that seemed to wrap around me, caressing my skin in all the right places like the hands of a familiar lover. "Stop it." I protested in a low voice, not trusting it to stay steady. Surprisingly, Nathalie did.

"I'm sorry." She said without a hint of repentance, a twinkle in her grey eyes. "The word up the grapevine amongst my kin is that you are as reckless as powerful. A loose cannon. They make no mention of actual mental acuity... or beauty." I couldn't tell whether it was sarcastic or she meant it. "Perhaps I misjudged you. There may be more to you than meets the eye, perhaps enough to seduce one such as Ivy..."

"Yeah, well look, don't touch." I actually managed to swat the hand she had raised near my face away, which only amused her further.

"So confident. Tell me, Ivy, would she be your prospective Scion, by any chance?"

"Yes." Ivy answered, and for once, I didn't challenge her claim over me. I was her girlfriend, nothing more, but she was right earlier; Nathalie didn't need to know that. "She is."

"Are you?" She asked me this time, and I nodded. To my dismay, instead of dissuading her, she resumed her circling despite my acknowledgement. Maybe she couldn't touch me, but it was still unnerving as hell. "Now it's your turn to tell me something, little witch. Do you understand why it is I can't touch you?"

"Yes. I'm under Ivy's protection." I answered immediately.

"That is not inaccurate, but it is a simplification of your condition. No living vampire is allowed to offer her own protection, no matter her lineage. What you assume is that you are under Rynn Cormel's protection, I believe."

"Same difference as far as you're concerned." I sneered at her. Maybe I should have started acting real nice to her, because again, she just seemed to grow more fond of me the more venomous I got. "You don't get squat, either from me or Ivy. Why don't you just take your queen of the damned routine and leave us the hell alone? Ivy's been through enough." I had to be crazy. Appealing to an undead's good will? Yeah, right, that would work...

"Ah, but on the contrary, it might make a world of difference, dear Rachel. Your continued health is tied to whatever Master Ivy looks up to, and while it is obvious that she would sacrifice much for you, her Master might not be so inclined to such kindness..."

"What are you getting at?" I asked her. "Cormel has given us his blessing to pursue a Scion relationship. It doesn't get any more clear-cut than that. I don't think you lived as long as you have risking that kind of fiasco for a cheap thrill like little old me."

"Rachel, that's enough." Ivy cut in. I ignored her, committed as I was to my head-on confrontation; in retrospect, a mistake. I might not have written off the edge of panic in her voice as mere fear that I would push Nathalie too far. Nathalie's sinister snicker should have tipped me off too.

"Getting at?" I tensed. She was at my back now, and her hands rested on my shoulders, gripping them softly. Her breath caressed my cheek, and yet her sudden proximity somehow didn't revolt me as much as it should have. I couldn't quite bring myself to shrug her off, even if I knew I should have. "I'm not getting at anything. I'm simply warning you not to take anything for granted. Things are rarely as they seem. For instance, do you know what Master vampires such as myself do to their closest living vampire followers? Our favourites, our top lieutenants, our closest confidants?"

"I... no, I don't." I answered completely naturally, as if the fangs of an undead vamp weren't almost at my throat. "What?"

"All of them are bound to us, much like a Shadow would be. Take your dear Ivy, for instance. Long before Piscary ever made her his Scion, the instant she turned of age, he bound her to himself, just as I did with Skimmer, just as any responsible master would. It is for their protection, you see, as well as ours. If we are not careful, if these ties are not established early on, they are liable to get caught up in our politicking. It is quite an insult, a politically correct one, to send a living vampire back to her master with a bite from another undead, you see. The binding make these encounters less liable to happen. They tend to have quite... unpleasant repercussions, lethal even sometimes, and not always for the bitten vampire."

The last of Nathalie's word, I felt, were not meant for me, but rather for Ivy; her face went red almost instantly in obvious, deep embarrassment, but soon it fell, her breathing picking up and turning almost panicked. It didn't last long, but I definitely picked up on the depths of pain she had just experienced, and yet my desire to go to her and hug her... it just wasn't there. Fortunately, Jenks was there.

"Ivy? What is she talking about?" His eyes kept darting from me to Ivy. "Are you okay?"

"I'll... I'll explain later. Nathalie, please, let her go." It was Ivy's turn to beg the instant she swallowed whatever realisation she just had. More than a hint of desperation still came through her voice. "You have no quarrel with her." In that moment, I had no idea what she meant by "letting me go", to be honest. The haze around my mind felt so light, and yet I was entirely comfortable in my current position...

"I won't do anything I'm not entitled to, Ivy." Nathalie assured her, which clearly wasn't enough for Jenks. He took flight and came to hover above me with sword in hand, the angry sparkles coming off him oddly... fascinating. I almost giggled staring at them. "I have simply made our discussion a little more comfortable for our dear Rachel. Where is the harm in that? She can still think for herself." I could hear Nathalie smirk, and yet, even if my little inner voice told me that something was horribly wrong here, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. "If you absolutely didn't want anyone but you to touch her again, perhaps you should have made her your Scion instead of waiting."

"Jenks, she's not going to hurt her." Ivy said in a flat, defeated tone. "Stand down."

"Are you off your rocker, Ivy?! That damn vamp's got her bespelled! She's more out of it than a blood-sugared cookie at a vamp frat house party!" Jenks shouted from somewhere above me, and I frowned in confusion.

"I'm not bespelled." I protested, a little nagged by the way he made a huge deal of this. I mean, all Nathalie did was hold me. What was the problem with that? "I've been bespelled before, and it didn't feel like this."

"Tink's titties, Rache, SNAP OUT OF IT! A minute ago you were ready to rip her eyes out, now you're letting her hug you?! Doesn't that seem strange?!" I stood there blinking for a few seconds. I could hear the words, but I couldn't make sense of them. "'She can still think for herself'?! That's bull!" He addressed Nathalie with all his usual contempt for authority figures. The tiny voice cheered him on.

"I assure you that she can, master pixy. She merely cannot object to my proximity. I daresay she even finds it... enjoyable." Nathalie replied, proving her point by removing herself from my back briefly, the loss of contact making tearing an involuntary whimper from my throat, one that died down when her slender, strong arms came around my waist. "See?"

"This is wrong. So damn wrong. She's just your puppet!"

"She's just hugging me, Jenks. Nothing could be more harmless." The words came up without any conscious impulse on my part again. I knew something was wrong (I mean, I was defending an undead, goddammit!), I just couldn't want her to let me go; I certainly didn't want her to do more than that. "If she starts chewing on me, we'll bring out the nasty words. For now, we're just... talking and hugging."

"...With a master vamp. Riiight..."

"Jenks, for God's sake, she's messing with me. Do you need me to spell it out? Stand. Down." Ivy snapped at him. I could tell her nerves were getting seriously shot up, her distress the only thing that gave me a little clarity. I wanted... to go to her more and more... but I still didn't want to move either. The friction between the two desires was starting to make my brain chaff. "She could hurt, even kill Rachel without even meaning to. Don't do anything stupid."

"Crap." He swore, but moved away from Nathalie and me nonetheless, stopping near Ivy's shoulder. "Crap, crap, crap, crap, CRAP!! This stinks, Ivy!"

"There's nothing you can do. It's an object lesson to her."

"Correct." Nathalie approved. "Rachel here needs to learn a little respect for her betters. You, on the other hand," she spoke to Ivy, "have been a model vampire, truly. You're of much better stock than I ever expected one of Piscary's to be. Much like your mother was while alive, I'm sure."

"What? What does your mom have to do with any of this?" I asked her, that earlier look of despair she bore still fresh in my mind. "Ivy?"

She didn't answer, only stayed very still, very quiet. Nathalie did it for her.

"Just like any healthy vampire, Ivy had a great many partners, as I'm sure you're aware. You are hardly her first, or the first woman she was attracted to. Skimmer was the first. I was the second."

"What?!" Jenks uttered, dashing before Ivy's eyes. "Ivy, what the hell is she talking about? She... she's lying, right?"

"No." Ivy admitted quietly. "She's not."

"It happened some thirteen years ago." Nathalie continued. "She and Skimmer visited my domain during their break from school. I visited them one night."

"You... visited?" I was afraid to ask, the fear cutting briefly through the haze, but not long enough for me to extricate myself from Nathalie's web. "Do you mean you... slept with them?"

"Yes." She purred her answer, the vibration in her chest felt against my back. "Even after so many centuries of life, these are memories I will always cherish. I took them both that night. They were a feast the likes of which I had not had in decades. Quite glorious."

Glorious to her, perhaps, but Ivy was crying across from us. They were quiet, prideful tears, but they were there.

"It was not strictly pleasure to me, of course. My rivalry with Piscary is an old one, and I would not have missed an opportunity to mark his favourite for the world. However, he took it very poorly. Three days after that night, he killed his Scion as Ivy's punishment for giving in to me."

"His... Scion?" The maths were starting to add up in my addled brain, a timeline beginning to form slowly but surely, and the realisation made my heart drop like a stone.

"My mother, Rachel." She lifted shimmering eyes to mine. "Her death was my punishment for sleeping with Nathalie and letting her bite me. I always suspected, but..."

"We do not advertise our little games, Ivy." Nathalie sounded almost apologetic. "I have heard of your mother, how strong she was before her death. A terrible waste. I never would have dreamed he could be such a fool as to slaughter such a perfect Scion out of anger, but his methods were always crude. Well, no longer, dear. You do not belong to him any longer. You are mine."

The sudden silence was thick enough to cut with a knife.

"Oh? Have I forgotten to mention this?" She inquired, mockingly triumphant. "It is possible for someone to be bound to more than one Master, Ivy. A second, dormant bond can be forged if the one doing the binding is of sufficient strength. It is a link that awakens upon the breaking of the first. It was my ultimate insult to Piscary, proof that I was stronger than he was." She laughed, obviously pleased. "I never dreamed that I would ever get to claim you as mine, yet here you are."

"No. You're wrong, you're lying... Rynn bit me! He claimed me!" Ivy screeched in disbelief, her black eyes wild. Understandable, considering the alternative was that Nathalie had the power and the right to take her away from her family, her loved ones, her very life here in Cinci.

"Did he?" Nathalie drawled mockingly. "Well, let us see who is bound to whom, then. Only Rachel should react, if you truly are claimed by someone else."

My knees gave as pleasure tore me apart, making me collapse on all four. Between one heartbeat and the next, Nathalie pulled every ounce of pleasure I had ever felt from my scar from me, far, far too much for it to feel good. I collapsed, helpless, on the ground, the sensations, and terror at hearing Ivy react to Nathalie's assault, making me seize. If this was true, if Ivy truly belonged to Nathalie, then I was screwed; I was under her protection, and she was damn well free to do with me as she pleased.

"Don't be so surprised, Ivy." Nathalie's casual voice seemed to come from very far. "Rynn is first and foremost a politician. He would never betray anything if he failed to bind you. It would affect his political standing is everyone knew is right hand woman was only his as long as I willed it. Nevertheless, I believe Skimmer will be ecstatic. Now, dear Rachel, where were we?" Her hunting aura wrapped itself tightly around me, flushing at once from me the warmth of life and every thought in my head, leaving me weakened and helpless.

"Please, don't hurt her. I'll go with you, without a fuss. Just don't hurt her."

"Ivy, you can't!" Jenks objected violently. "You disease-ridden fairy whore! You're not touching either of them! Rache, come on, snap out of it!"

A hand made of steel wrenched me up with irresistible force, a pane of cold glass pressing against my back as Nathalie pinned me against it, the heat radiating from me making it fog over for several feet on either side of me. The cold snapped me out of my pheromone induced stupor just in time to see a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth lung for my throat... and stop within a hair's breadth of my skin. I thought at first that she wanted to savour my fear, but she murmured in my ear, so very quietly that I knew Ivy couldn't hear;

"There is no need for you to be afraid of me, Rachel. I actually have very little interest in you, beyond making Ivy step out of line." The nail of her thumb dug deeply in my skin, deep enough to draw blood, making me shout in pain and surprise. "I can hardly punish her for neglecting Skimmer when she refuses to do wrong." My blood immediately ran cold with dread and understanding. All of this, everything she had done in the last minutes had been to provoke Ivy. I was bait, and the prey was Ivy

Three words rang like a bell in my mind. _Ivy. Hurt. Trap._ Desperately, I shouted. "Ivy, wait! Don't!"

It was far too late. To Ivy's credit, I barely saw her move. Unfortunately for her, even if she was standing right in front of me, with most of her body pressed against mine, I _never_ saw Nathalie move. In the blink of an eye, she was no longer standing in front of me. They both materialised several feet away in a blur of bared fangs and snarled hisses, one of Ivy's fist caught in Nathalie's white-knuckled grip shaking with her futile efforts to overpower the older woman. Futility didn't stop her, it didn't even enter her mind. She fought as if she were possessed, straining against the much more powerful undead with every fibre of muscle in her being, all with a singular purpose, protecting her mate, me. With a battle cry that was far too deep to come from someone so small, Jenks dove into the fray, sword in hand and fury etched on his face, ready to slice the undead in a few choice spots. Thin, bloody lines began appearing all over her, but she hardly gave them any notice. It was clear that she was too much for them.

Frantically, I scanned the carpet for a splash of red plastic, skittering on all four when I spotted my gun a few feet away. With a quivering hand I gripped it and brought it to bear on Nathalie, taking one deep, steadying breath before my sights came to rest on Nathalie and Ivy's entangled forms. I needed a clean shot; hitting Ivy would leave her at the mercy of Nathalie, and then she would fall upon me and tear me to bloody shreds.

"Ivy, spin her around!" Jenks ordered her. "Give Rache a shot!"

For a fraction of a second, Ivy's eyes met mine, perfect understanding flowing between us in that one brief moment. With a primal scream of effort, she tripped the undead and jerked her between herself and me, giving me an unobstructed view of her back. I had my shot. Slowly, I began pulling the trigger, resisting the temptation of jerking it and potentially ruining everything.

'_Night 'night, Nathalie. _I thought with a fierce, grim smile, just before a thunderous noise crackled in the air, accompanied by a blinding flash.

The bolt of energy stopped Jenks dead in his tracks, catching him off guard. With a guttural scream, the small pixy crashed to the carpeted floor, his body sheathed in purplish-white, tainted magical power, shaped into a cruel incapacitating spell. The origin of the bolt made my mouth gape.

It had come straight from the hand of Nathalie's Scion.

Frantically, I shifted my aim to the new threat, but I didn't even make it halfway through before a bolt similar to the one that had incapacitated Jenks slammed straight into my chest. The pain paralysed me, the negative energy flowing through my limbs making the muscles contract almost to their snapping point. For a moment, I couldn't find my breath, the pain to intense, but once I did, I screamed, and the distraction sealed the hopeless fight for Ivy; she barely took her eyes off Nathalie for a fraction of a second, but it was more than enough this time. The undead took hold of her shoulder, making her screech in pain as a series of ominous crunches were heard and Ivy was slowly forced to her knees, Nathalie looming over her, domineering and insurmountable. Her left arm hung at her side, useless, the fingers of her right hand wrapping tightly around Nathalie's wrist in an effort to break free.

"Know your place!" Nathalie snarled at her, maintaining her obviously agonising grip on Ivy's shoulder effortlessly. The trapped vamp barely blinked. "You might have been Piscary's favourite, but you are not mine, Skimmer is! I will not tolerate such behaviour! You will stand down _now_, unless you wish to be punished in Rachel's stead."

As on cue, her Scion hit me with another of those damned bolts, the energy erupting from her fingertips without a hint of emotion crossing her blank face. Screaming ensued, killing Ivy's defiance dead. Panicked, she stared at me, then Nathalie in turn.

"Stop it." She whimpered with her head lowered, her body going limp and still. "Please, I'll do whatever you want, but stop this!"

"Angel, stop it." Nathalie commanded... several agonising seconds later. "What are you offering?" She asked.

My vision was blurry with tears of pain, but I could make out Ivy just enough to know she was staring right at me. Her reply wasn't voiced; instead, she tilted her head to the side, offering her neck to her new undead mistress.

"Ivy, no..." I said feebly.

"Rachel, quiet!" She snapped at me. "We're beaten. You can't fight this, Dear Heart. Just save yourself. Leave me."

I felt sick, and I doubt it had anything to do with the spells I had been hit with. It only got worse when Nathalie stepped behind Ivy and slipped her arms around her before nuzzling her. Her long fangs pierced Ivy's skin almost tenderly, yet she tensed, her fists clenching and her teeth gnashing together.

"Ivy!" My voice was joined by Jenks', both of us battered and broken, unable to help her. Nathalie looked me straight in the eyes as she fed, her look growing more and more smug as the sounds Ivy made became passionate rather than pained; she hadn't been trying to hide how much the bite hurt, but rather how good it felt. She was broken, her forced submission, her humiliation complete. Pleasure used as a weapon... figures she was the one whom Skimmer had learned that trick from.

As for me, I wasn't pissed off. I wasn't heartbroken. I wasn't even mad as hell. I was fucking homicidal. "I'll kill you." I grunted, miraculously finding the strength to right myself from the foetal position I had curled myself into. "If it's the last thing I do, I'll kill you"

Nathalie chuckled. "Angel, would you kindly take her downstairs as well? I would like a moment alone with Ivy." Her hands caressing Ivy possessively, she added, "It is high time I bed you again, hmm?"

If Ivy could understand her, I couldn't say. Her eyes were distant and unfocused, the way they were when she retreated deep within herself to protect her sanity from trauma and suffering. I took strength from that sight. My muscles shook, but I managed to stand up, Latin spilling from my lips to dispel the unnatural pain that Nathalie's Scion had shackled me with. By the time I got to my feet, my strength had returned. My anger, on the other hand, was intact.

_Okay, you've got the flashy ley line spells._ I thought as I homed in on the mysterious woman, the more immediate threat I had to neutralise before I could help Ivy. _Let's see how you can handle something more down and dirty_. In several quick steps, I was on top of her, spinning in a tight circle that sent my leg straight into her stomach... or at least, it was its intended target, one it didn't reach since she blocked it perfectly. So, she could fight as well as spell. Not good...

_Just what the hell is she_?! I wondered as I narrowly blocked her lightning fast counter. The blow hurt as it slammed against my wrists, but it didn't have the bone-shattering force a vamp's strike would have had. Her teeth were normal as well, I noticed before I frantically stepped away from her rapid strikes. No fangs. She was too tall for a were as well. She could use magic. A witch? Could Nathalie have chosen a witch as her Scion?

While she could definitely fight hand-to-hand, it was obvious from the pull of power I felt the instant I gave her some breathing room that she preferred magic to her fists. Harsh words in a language I didn't recognise erupted from her lips, an ominous glow encircling her hands as she chanted. Instinctively, I reached for a line, finding a huge one rather than my usual small one in the church's backyard. Without thinking, I channelled all of it and let it flow from my hands like a white torrent, welcoming the familiar pain of overtaxing my chi. The raw power met my opponent's carefully crafted spell head on in the space between us. Dark, demon-tainted energy clashed with the pure, masterfully channelled spell she aimed at me, both of them grinding to a halt almost exactly between the two of us. Her eyes widened in surprise before narrowing.

"You have power." She admitted, her voice, which I heard for the first time, calm and melodious despite the struggle to stay on top of our little pissing contest. "However, you're a talent-less brute! Barely any knowledge, and even less control!" She snarled the last of her words and savagely twisted her hand. The control I exerted over the energy I channelled was brutally wrenched from me, the line spilling out of control through my entire body, making me once again double over in crippling pain. It took all of my will just to let go of the line before I was burnt to a crisp. I landed flat on my ass, my skin smouldering and tender, my muscles beyond sore, while Nathalie's "Angel" was merely breathing hard and wiping sweat off her brow. She slowly walked closer, giving me the minuscule (and cold) satisfaction of seeing her wobbling. Her right hand glowed with the spell she would no doubt use to finish me off.

_How could she kick my ass like this, with both magic and martial arts? Goddammit, she's like a female version of Quen... Oh. My. God... Nathalie wouldn't bind a common witch, but what about an..._

"You! You're an Elf!"

She was standing right over me by the time I said it, bending at the waist to grasp my shirt and pull me upright, the better to knock me out cold. To be honest, I wasn't a hundred percent sure that she was, but it did make her freeze and her eyes widen in surprise, so I assumed I was right. Moot point though. What really mattered was the tiny window of opportunity she gave me, one I happily took. Her kneecap crunched under the heel I slammed into it, quickly followed by another crunchy sound, this time of her nose meeting my knee. She fell backwards, down for the count.

_One down, one to go_... I thought as I turned towards Nathalie and... what was left of Ivy.

"Bravo, Rachel." She applauded me sarcastically with thunderstorms in her eyes. "You seem to have a gift for hurting those dearest to me."

"Look who's talking, bitch!" I retorted, the sight of Ivy, dazed, confused and bleeding in the arms of that creature making me ignore the savage pain of my chi filling with energy for the last round. "You think I'll let you get away with hurting both Ivy and Jenks? The only way you're getting out of here is in a box!" I pointed a finger at her and a lance of ley line energy speared her through the chest, sending her flying across the room. Which one of us was the most hurt by my magical attack, however, was a hard call to make since my head just about split open around the same time she slammed into the far wall. Tears that were not water but blood spilled from my eyes, as did my ears and nose. I swore. My overuse of my magic was taking its toll; if I didn't stop soon, I'd give myself permanent brain damage.

"Ivy." I groaned, stumbling towards my now-freed lover laying discarded on the floor. "Ivy, please, talk to me..."

"Rachel." She mumbled. Her eyes could barely focus on me, whether from blood loss or all the chemicals Nathalie's bite had forced into her. "Rachel, you have to get out of here. She's... not playing anymore."

"I hit her hard. It'll slow her down, come on! We can get out."

"Rache, look out!" Jenks shouted in warning.

Unfortunately, despite having a three-inch wide, charred hole in her side, Nathalie stood up effortlessly, without a sign of strain on her face. In fact, as she made her way to me, she just looked more pissed than ever.

_Splat gun, now, Rachel._

I lunged for my discarded weapon the second I spotted it, sighted up Nathalie and squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, three, four times, it didn't matter; every shot seemingly went through her as she dodged the splat balls faster than my eyes could ever follow. She never broke stride, always kept the same languorous pace, right until she was standing before me, with murder in her black eyes.

With a grunt of inhuman effort, I tapped the line again, but before I pulled enough energy from it to light a light bulb, Nathalie's fangs buried in my throat so fast that I felt the punctures before the savagery of her embrace. The pain was overwhelming; my blood lit on fire, almost literally turning into magma in my veins. My bones turned to ice, my skin became like dry, brittle paper, cracking under the slightest touch. My muscles shrivelled up, losing every ounce of strength they once held. Time ceased to exist; there was only this agony that made me wish for eternal damnation, because there was no way hell could hurt as much as this. Not even when Nathalie let me go, dropping me to the floor where I curled into a foetal position, hurting too much to scream or cry, did the pain stop.

"You will die now, witch." She whispered to me after kneeling by my side, the hand she used to push my hair away so I could look at her bitterly cold against my feverish forehead. "The venom I spread through your veins will make you wish for death, but assure you, it will not come soon. Hell will feel like paradise next to your final ho-."

She never finished her sentence. With a feral snarl, Ivy launched herself at her back, her body a flurry of deadly coordinated limbs. Any one of the many blows she landed would have crippled me, and more than one would have killed me outright, yet the undead soaked them up like a sponge. Ivy narrowly avoided her counter attacks and held her ground well enough that a spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, she might walk out of this alive, at least.

Hope can be a bitch like that.

It only took one blow from Nathalie to incapacitate Ivy, who went down like a ragdoll after being backhanded. She slid down the wall in a crumpled heap, unable to offer any further resistance aside from a feeble growling. The undead's long fingers wrapped around her throat, wrenching Ivy up brutally to her snarling face right before she flung her at the windows like a cannonball. Ivy's back created a spider web pattern when it impacted the reinforced glass. Time froze. I could see everything with such horrible clarity; the blood that stained her perfect skin, the pitch darkness of her eyes, the pain on her face, the sheer terror because there was only one absolute certainty left.

In a second, she would be dead, and there was nothing I could do.

The window gave like paper. In slow motion, Ivy went through it, her scream of terror seemingly stretching out into the eternity of her damnation, approaching as fast as the concrete of the parking lot below. The thud of Ivy Tamwood's life ending ten floors below was almost anticlimactic. How could such an inconspicuous sound announce the end of everything I held dear?

I heard distant wailing as well, a sound of pure anguish. Somewhere closer, Nathalie ran her hand through her hair and whispered, barely audibly, the name of the woman whose heart she had broken. Not mine, the other one. Skimmer. Skimmer was crying down below, holding the broken, lifeless body of the woman we had both loved.

Another certainty etched itself in my mind. I had failed Ivy. Her soul was gone, for real this time, and I had failed my promise to preserve it. My imminent death almost seemed like a blessing if it meant I never had to face the empty shell that would wander the Earth for years to come, wearing her face, using her voice, but without any of the things that made Ivy great. The thought was more painful than the venom's agony.

The pain in my veins spiked, making my brain mercifully shut down. My barely functioning vision tunnelled until only darkness remained and I drifted into oblivion, never expecting to wake up.

Little did I know that my worst nightmare was just beginning.

A/N: I suppose this is the part where this fic looses all of its following. If you're looking for me, I'll be cowering somewhere beneath a rock very far away. I will say in my defense that it said "tragedy" in the description since the beginning, and there will be a happy ending to this if you still want to stick with it. For now, I'll be under my rock.


	17. Chapter 16

A/N: Is it safe to come out yet?

**Chapter 16**

The dreams that filled the darkness were strange. Vivid beyond belief, more real than reality. A cold slab of raw stone pressed at my back. A dark, shadowy, beautiful man is looming over me, with an equally beautiful woman lurking in the background, gazing at me adoringly. There were fangs in both their mouths, his long, hers short. The scent of ashes from my burning home filled my nose. But more vivid than all was the emptiness in my heart.

_This... this is not what I wanted._

The man leaned in to kiss me. I could taste a hint of my once-human blood in his mouth. It was... not unpleasant, but not nearly enough to fill the emptiness within my breast. His tongue ran against the rapidly sprouting fangs in my own mouth, making me shiver in pleasure, yet despite the sensations, I despised him. Nothing is as it was promised. This singular thought keeps echoing into my mind, but I had no context for it. I didn't need understanding, I had knowledge. The hatred simply was.

_I didn't want this to happen!_

My entire body was hurting, the pain... interesting. It was a pain of rebirth, my muscles knitting themselves into new, more powerful ways, my bones getting denser, nigh-unbreakable. My sense sharpened to unthinkable peaks, my hearing picking up the pulse of nature surrounding us. The fascination did nothing to soothe the ache in my heart. I could no longer feel love, but I could feel pain. Regret. Loss. Even if I didn't understand the reason behind them anymore, I could still feel them. I knew the two beautiful creatures had taken everything from me before making me one of their own.

The look of surprise on the man's face when my fingers broke through his ribcage to wrap around his immobile heart brought some measure of satisfaction. A chill wind rose, making his fresh blood staining my torn toga grow colder. I didn't feel it. My body no longer heeded the plights of the living. His lifeless eyes stared glassily at me as I wrenched the handful of meat from his chest. He fell with a thud. My satisfaction grew.

A gleeful cry surrounded me. I stood up with preternatural grace to face my lover, her face a mask of joy and adoration.

"I knew you could do it. By the Gods, you are magnificent, my Love." The woman I loved in my past life fawned over me, the arms that once offered tenderness the likes of which I had never felt coming around me. With her usual playful, sensuous mirth, she pulled my fingers into her mouth to suck on the disgusting blood covering them, the sight of her revolting me. "Just as knew you would be. There are so many glorious years ahead for you... with me by your side." With a purred chuckle, she began to remove my clothing with clear intent, her lips caressing every inch of my skin she bared. "I want you to take me now."

I stopped her with a crushing hand around her throat. Eyes the colour of sin widened in surprise. Fingers that could break my bones just a day earlier grasped feebly at my wrist, the scent of her fear lighting up my dulled spirit for the first time this night.

"No!" She rasped. "No, please! I gave you everything I promised!"

"You took everything!" I snarled at her, shaking her like a ragdoll. "You promised to set me free me from the shackles of my life and make me like you! Instead, you and this monster devoured all I was! You took everyone from me and turned me into this empty shell!"

"You wished them dead!" She protested, her voice growing weaker and weaker. "You hated them all! None of them were worthy of you! Not while you were alive, and even less now!" She grew very quiet when I flexed my muscles and threw her to the ground with enough strength to break a man's back. Pathetically, she looked up at me with pleading in her eyes. The scent of her fear was my everything. I burned with the desire to know what her suffering would feel like.

"You used me to kill your master." I loomed over her, feeling for the first time in my life in control. It was not worth the price I had paid. "I loved you, but all you ever saw in me was a tool. I could have forgiven you for this, but you brought this creature you served into my home! He slaughtered them all!"

"You hated them..." She whispered, quieter than a mouse and much more scared. "You hated them."

"Not my son." I stated calmly though my rage burned like a volcano. It had no basis anymore. I could barely remember why I had loved the boy of eight years the creature I had just killed had atrociously murdered. It was insubstantial, without purpose, but it was all I had. "I could have forgiven anything but the murder of my son."

I took a step towards her, and she skittered away like the foulest insect, the regal, proud demeanour that had once drawn me to her like a moth to a flame now long forgotten. She was the most pathetic thing I had ever witnessed, putting even my old human self to shame. A cry of terror and pain erupted from her lips as my foot was brought down hard on each of her limbs in turn, snapping them like twigs. Her struggling ceased instantly, even as she began to whimper frantically, then wail like a woman possessed.

It was the sweetest music to my ears.

"No! Noooo!" She cried over and over again, her mouth the only part of her body moving. "Don't leave me! Don't leave me! Please, please, please! I love you, please!"

Her pleading went unheeded. I left her behind for whatever predator or scavenger wanted such disgusting carrion. With a heavy heart and no sense of purpose, I began walking through the wilderness, unconsciously attracted to the pulse of the human cattle that would sustain me. My body knew the rules of the world of darkness I had been flung into, and this knowledge would serve me well in the centuries to come. No sun. No food but living blood. Secrecy.

Years and years flew before my eyes, most of them spent in abject misery. "Ghoul". "Outcast". "Low-blooded". These words kept repeating themselves, falling from the lips of beings that, for all their perceived superiority, turned to dust around me. I outlived. I grew. I consumed. Eventually, I was strong enough to create a line from the now-potent blood in my veins, and the revelation was like feeling the light of the sun again. Power. To shape lives and steer their course, to sail them towards my vision of perfection.

Only a single regal bloodline was ever born from me, to be the treasured center of my existence to the end of my endless days, but other strays like myself were drawn to me. The outcasts, the rejects of the world of darkness were mine to claim, to focus and purify, until they were more powerful than any grouping of my kind to be found in the old world. I became a master. I was a their beloved queen, standing tall despite my unlife's inglorious beginnings, finally alive once more after centuries. Music, laughter, soft skin and warm blood, both freely given. Violence sometimes.

The visions abruptly lost their pleasantness. Ruins, smoke and fire replaced passion, music, and art. Betrayal and reckoning danced before my eyes in a kaleidoscope of violent bloodshed. Enemies and former friends lay dead at my feet, their blood mingling with that of the family I had gathered for myself. Eventually, only myself and one other were left. A girl, all of sixteen, pointy-eared with eyes like twin emeralds and hair the colour of a raven's wings, dressed in the virginal white robes of a sacrifice, a heavy engraved bracelet burdening her wrist. Behind her stood the altar upon which her life was to be spilled to fuel the spell that would have ended mine. She had been betrayed the same way I was; both of our people had turned their back on us to save themselves.

The ceremonial dagger that was to end her life she had driven through the palm of my extended hand in a gesture of defiance. She was the last one alive, with nothing to lose but her pride. I could feel her quiver through the cold steel piercing my flesh. I pulled my hand away with irresistible strength, the dagger following without its owner. Staring in her eyes, I pulled it out of my palm and tossed it to the side. She shied away when I stepped close, a predatory smile on my lips.

"Why are you holding back, little elf?" I mocked the helpless girl. "Where is your magic? Why are you not reducing me to ashes? Your brethrens certainly tried." She didn't answer, but her hand did move to the bracelet covering her wrist. It was made of enchanted silver, the kind that could be used to neuter magical abilities. "They have stripped you of your powers, have they not? You were not willing to give your life for their cause, and so they tried to take it from you." She refused to answer me, but I could see the pain of betrayal in her eyes. I felt an inkling of something for the girl. Admiration. Her will to live was a thing of steel, unbreakable. I had no desire to snuff her life out. This night had quenched my thirst for death for the decade to follow. "I am leaving for the new world tonight. There is nothing left for me here. I will take those amongst my followers who stayed loyal to me." Startling her, I gripped her wrist and shattered the bracelet shackling her powers. "You are alone now. Your kind has turned its back on you. Come with me, and I will put your powers to good use."

The girl would become my Angel in years to come, her name being left behind when she fell into step behind me that fateful night. Her study of magic, her thirst for knowledge was endless. From a reluctant servant she became my closest confidante, eventually taking up the mantle of my Scion, the bond between us making her body an appropriate vessel for her tremendous magical abilities. She was a force to behold, able to wield magic as old as time, to turn her entire body into a weapon and to provide companionship on even the loneliest day. We were never lovers, though I knew the desire was there on her part, and often on mine as well. My fangs were the only relief she had from me, though she had no trouble finding companions of her own to warm her bed amongst those we gathered around us. Step by step, stone by stone, I rebuilt what was lost, found more willing to serve me, until my new dominion put the old one to shame.

The visions fast-forwarded once more. Flashes of skin and blond hair, blue eyes swallowed by the darkness of desire, soft moans, sweet blood in my mood putting every past encounter I had with her ancestors to shame. Pleasure. Silk beneath me. Her name falling from my lips as her ecstasy consumed us both. Her aura flowing from her and wrapping around me, bringing my heart to life. "Mine. All mine. My Skimmer." The closest illusion of love I had in centuries.

Another abrupt shift. Anger now burned through my veins. Pain lanced through my side. A lovely face contorted with fear and despair inches from my mine. A dying witch laying on the floor, her agony filling the air. She had given her life for the creature I held by the throat. They were a pointless waste, both of them. The witch had power. The girl I held could have amounted to something grandiose, but she was simply uncontrollable. What a shame

The murderous instincts I had kept on a tight leash for three hundred years broke free. The black-haired girl fell, tossed like a doll through the pane of glass making up most of the wall before me. The witch screamed. Down below, my beloved Skimmer wailed in unison with her.

As if someone had set off a fire cracker next to my ear, I bolted upright, awakening in an unfamiliar bed with a painful cry that seemingly tore the parched lining of my throat. I couldn't see. The world was nothing but a maelstrom of blurry colours that twisted around me without rhyme or reason. I was nauseous, my guts feeling like they had been ripped out by some maniac and knitted back in all wrong. A catheter was inserted in the veins of my arm, a tiny little thing that felt like I had been speared straight through the limb.

What the hell had I just experienced?

With trembling fingers and panting breath, I tried to pry it out, but before I could do any more than touch it, which hurt like hell by the way, a voice I hated more than any other rose from somewhere to my right.

"I truly must advise against pulling it out." Nathalie suggested from beyond the range my eyes could focus on. "There is still more than enough of my venom in your veins to kill you. It would take a week rather than hours, but the end result would be the same."

I'll spare you the details of my attempts at tapping a line to blow her into next week. Let's just say that I kept discovering new pain thresholds to push through, and my stomach was done simply protesting and had dipped into activism. No, make that terrorism. I was lucky Nathalie was quick with a damn bucket...

"What the fuck?!" I tried to scream even before the dry heaves subsided, but it came out as a hoarse, panicked whisper. "What the fuck did you do to me?!"

"Language, dear." She chastised me so matter-of-factly while wiping my mouth, and I hated her so much for it. "That's enough." A gentle yet irresistible hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled it away from the needle painfully inserted in my skin. Vampire incense, alien and more potent than any I had ever smelled, rose around me, sapping my will to struggle instantly. Shit. She had me bespelled effortlessly once again. "There." She soothed (yeah, right) me as she eased me back onto the pillow, one of her hand supporting my head, the other rearranging the blankets around me in an almost caring way. She left my side for a second and came back with a chair, settling herself by my side so she could maintain the shroud of pheromones that effectively sedated me. "You should lie still for a few hours yet. You have gone through a bag already." She pointed at the I.V. bag hooked into the catheter. "It will take what is left in this one to flush the venom out of your system."

"What?" I mumbled more calmly, the pheromones and thirst making my tongue feel thick. Maybe I couldn't stand the sight of her, but God help me, she at least made the pain stop. For once in my life, vamp pheromones actually gave me a semblance of clarity instead of taking it away. Must be a Tuesday... "What're you talking about? You bit me. Why are you going on about venom? Vampires aren't venomous."

"Not anymore, no. I am quite old, Rachel." She explained, with what might be a frown or a smile on her face. I couldn't tell, seeing (or rather not) as I couldn't make out anything past my nose with any clarity. "It is not very flattering to me to reveal that most of my kind has had time to evolve this particular ability out of our genome over the course of my life. As I'm sure you are aware, vampire saliva contains neurotransmitters that alter the brain's perception of certain stimuli, pain, most notably. Long ago, in a less civilised time, these transmitters could be made to change every sensory input into one of pain, so the nervous system of a victim could be overwhelmed during a feeding. As the taking of willing prey became more widespread, the ability atrophied and eventually disappeared. I am one the few vampires left old enough to retain this particular trait. As I said, it is not flattering."

I blinked slowly, staring at her through the blur. "Are you joking?" I grunted incredulously. "Is that why you saved me? So you can bore me to death with lame-ass attempts at humour? Please be merciful and just snap my neck."

"Yes." She answered calmly, and reclined back into her chair, her legs crossing casually as my jab found no purchase. "And no, I did not save you for that reason alone. I thought this much was obvious. Your life is no longer mine for the taking."

My eyes closed as she twisted the proverbial knife in the wound I was trying my hardest to ignore. Damn it, I couldn't kill her, but I'd be damned if I let myself cry in front of her.

"You bitch." I seethed quietly through my gritted teeth, my resolution not to aggravate her so she wouldn't cut off her pheromones vanishing into thin air. "You murderous bitch."

"Most who would agree with you lie in unmarked graves. I suppose this is proof that you are right about the murderous part at least." She nodded at me, her tone mocking. "Ivy will no doubt want to reclaim you once she awakens. I have wronged her, and you, enough as it is. Letting you die before she could choose what to do with you herself would have been uncouth."

"Wronged us? Uncouth?" My bewilderment came back with its extended family in tow. "Farting in front of your parent's guest is uncouth! Stealing someone's parking space is uncouth! You fucking killed her!" I shouted in her face, the outburst making an agonising fit of coughing overcome me. With firm hands, Nathalie helped me sit up despite my struggling, her ease at handling me making me feel like a fussy child, if a child could hate her mother the way I hated her. Paying no heed to me, she brought a cup of water to my mouth and gently slipped a straw past my lips. The cool water tasted coopery and burned on the way down like freaking hard liquor (mixed with a little ground glass), but it was pure relief nonetheless. I couldn't help drinking several mouthfuls, even as quiet tears slipped past my closed eyelids. "You killed her." I repeated quietly once she eased me back beneath the covers once more.

"Yes." Nathalie admitted again, her calm composure practically making me foam at the mouth. It only got worse when she gently pushed my hair out of my eyes, the hand I used to swat at her missing by a mile. "I did end her first life before her time. I was her master, Rachel. Punishing both of you was my right, but protecting her was my duty. I failed her in that. Your offenses were not proportionate to her punishment."

"Our offenses?! You tried to rape me, just to push Ivy into attacking you!"

"And you took Ivy away from my favourite." Before I could blink, her hand had wrapped around my throat. Her voice was still calm, yet I could feel it like an edge of ice slicing through my brain. "Her aggression was your fault, both of you. Had Ivy been by her side, Skimmer's mind would still be intact rather than a pale shadow of its former glory. It will take years for me to help her heal." She leaned in very close, so close that I could see the thin rim of grey in her eyes melt away and smell the minty freshness of her breath. Vamp bad breath? A myth. "You caused pain to the two beings I treasure above all other, Rachel. I have half a mind to smother the life out of you here and now."

"What do you think YOU did? Try to give me a good time?" I managed around her constricting, spidery fingers. "What about Ivy? You sent her to a better place? Are the Damned big believers in heaven now? Go to hell. I think your soul's already there. Go fetch it and don't come back."

"If our positions were inverted, I might entertain your wounded feelings, but as it his, my fingers are at your throat." She squeezed harder, just to make sure she got her point across. Stars were beginning to dance before my eyes. "I would suggest calming down, lest you desire your death wish be fulfilled."

"I don't have a death wish." I whispered after several heartbeats, the pure, murderous impulses flashing in her obsidian eyes making my voice quiet and cowed. I'd been under threat of death before, heck, it was the rule more than the exception ever since I left the I.S., but never like this. Never while lying sick, weak and helpless in a bed, at the mercy of one of nature's most flawless, most merciless predator. I had no trump card up my sleeve, no backup on its way, nothing but a sharp tongue that Nathalie looked ready to tear off with her teeth and eat in front of my eyes. The realisation was like a cold shower.

"The illusion is perfect. I would never have known, had you not told me." Satisfied that I was properly scared shitless, she let me go, a physiologically useless sigh slipping past her lips as she settled herself back into her seat. "You have quite a gift for angering me, little witch. My control has not been this poor in the past century. I am truly sorry that events turned out this way, no matter what you believe. Every party involved lost here."

"Whatever." I retorted more tamely and looked away from her, forfeiting to the pheromones she pumped out around me. I didn't much want to live right now, but despite everything that monster had taken from me, I didn't want to die either. A mild high from the chemicals she pumped out sounded great, if it meant keeping my ass alive long enough to get away from her. "If you care so much about her, you could've just kept Skimmer with you and avoided us all a lot of grief."

"That was a gamble on my part, one that never should have ended this way. Do not be so quick to assume I parted with her casually." I thought for a second the undead would leap for my throat again, she looked so pissed. Yay for my vision improving, boo for it showing me scary things... "I saw an opportunity to ease political tensions at a critical moment and make Skimmer a greater woman at once. Do not judge me so, witch." My eyebrows scrunched up in confusion, making the undead shake her head. "Of course. Why am I not surprised? You have no idea why I agreed to send her here, do you? Even if you were wrapped up in the very events that prompted Skimmer and Ivy's reunion. Speaking of which, I believe I do owe you thanks for your hand in them; handing Stanley Saladan over to a demon... you do have your moments of brilliance, it seems. Shame he is now back. Ten lifetimes of servitude as a familiar would have been fitting for him."

"Huh? What are you talking about?" Through the massive headache I had given myself tapping a line earlier, I tried remember the events surrounding Skimmer moving in. Christmas two years ago. A wave of brimstone related deaths. The West coast cartel muscling in Trent's turf. Al gunning for me after he helped me put Piscary behind bars. Lee trying to hand me over to him to pay off one of his demon marks. Maybe Nathalie had trouble with Lee's organisation too... That would make sense. Skimmer came from California, so it stood to reason that Nathalie's territory was on the west coast. "Saladan's family caused trouble for you as well. They're from your turf."

"Very good." She drawled sarcastically. "Yes. One does not live as long as I have without making enemies. They are another old rivalry. The Saladan family has been vying for control over my dominion for over a century now. Their surge came at an... inopportune time. I could ill afford to fight on two fronts, both against witches and my own kind, and so I sent Skimmer here as a peace offering to Piscary. He needed her to get out of prison, and to return Ivy to a proper vampiric frame of mind."

"And how do you figure Skimmer would have become a better woman? By getting that bastard out of jail? Wanted to get rid of what was left of her conscience?"

"No. Again, how very clueless you are, Rachel. It had nothing to do with Piscary, and everything to do with her being close to Ivy. You are aware of their past, I'm sure. When Skimmer was taken from me the first time, she was but a girl similar to all of her predecessors, with the small difference that I never had to break her. She enjoyed what two women can do together from our very first night on, but she was... meeker than what I was looking for. When she came back, however, Ivy had changed her. She was no longer merely a good bed warmer. There was a backbone to her, a ferocious willpower. She stood up to me, even as she loved me. Ivy made her a true companion. That is the other reason why I sent her here. She seems to have this effect on people. She makes them better. Why, I believe she did something similar with you. I read your file, Rachel, from your time within Inderland Secu-."

"What?!" Another fit of coughing followed my outburst. "How the hell did you get that?!" In my book, the less she knew about me, the better. My I.S. file contained a lot of info.

"Don't look so surprised. You intrigued me." She said smugly. "It is a vampire-run agency after all. The director has been in my pocket for a long time. I had time to have it delivered while you were asleep, and I must say that it is hard to believe it belongs to a single woman rather than two. Before meeting Ivy, you were amongst the lowest ranked interns in the entire Cincinnati branch, skilled but nigh suicidal in your brashness and impulsivity. You were one step removed from your instructors taking bets on the time you had left before being turned into so much meat by an angry were. Then you were entrusted to Ivy, and everything changed. You were not recognised due to your inability to play the office games, but your accomplishments were there. Not to mention actually leaving the I.S. before your forty years contract expired, and what you accomplished afterwards. I would say she did something rather drastic, no?"

"Yes." I admitted in a quiet whisper of breath. "She taught me so much." Taught me, helped me overcome my adrenaline junkie ways enough for me to survive... Once upon a time, Ivy had been my mentor, an experienced runner showing a green-as-grass, overconfident rookie the ropes. At first, she couldn't stand me, but by the time I graduated from under her, we were tight, tight enough that she chose to follow when I left the I.S.. She'd been a perfect constant in my chaotic life. Even Jenks left me for a time when I drove him away with my lack of trust, but Ivy? No, never Ivy. Death was the only thing that could take her from me. Death had. "And now she's dead." I sniffed. To hell with what the undead vampire thought of me. Maybe it hadn't been the sole factor, but my pride had given her an excuse to try and take Ivy from me. She'd succeeded too, just not in the way she intended.

"How very intriguing..." Nathalie murmured, and I looked up to find her studying me intently. "You... truly have no desire to stay with her now, have you? I suspected your attempt to hide behind your future Scion status was a plot, but... you never had any intention of letting her forge this bond. She truly is dead to you even though she will awaken in just a few hours. _Entre l'amour et la mort_... I would never have imagined you would abandon her."

"Enter what? Damn it, if you won't leave me the fuck alone, stop speaking in riddles!"

"_Entre l'amour et la mort,_ Rachel." She repeated. "It is a vampire concept. Upon rebirth, the mind of an undead is a very fragile thing. I am sure you are aware that most of us walk into the sun before we reach our thirtieth year, going utterly insane. Only those who can take a willing Scion who loved them during their past life typically make it through. If the loved ones turn from the vampire, they abandon their former beloved to near-certain death, _la mort_. If they embrace the change in their beloved and refuse to let death claim them a second time, then they choose love, _l'amour_. It is the very foundation of our unlife. Look long and hard behind every master vampire, and you will find that first Scion." There was a hint of regret about her. I didn't care.

_Just like Ivy's dad with her mother... _I thought, my face blanching with Nathalie's words. Ivy's father refused to let his undead wife feed from anyone else but him, even if it took a massive toll on him. The first, and last, time I'd seen him, he'd been a gaunt, almost sickly man, surviving on brimstone. It had scared the crap out of me, a vision of what I thought Ivy wanted me to do for her when she died. _I'm so sorry, Ivy,_ I thought in total terror and despair, self-loathing tearing my soul apart, _I can't do this for you. You wouldn't want me to, I know it._ Yeah, I felt pretty shitty.

"Don't touch me!" I shrieked painfully when Nathalie inched closer, but it only made her laugh in that throaty, smooth way of hers. _Oh, crap on shit... _I really, REALLY didn't want her to find me interesting.

"Oh, Rachel, I was not lying when I said you hold little interest to me. However, this development does present you with a unique opportunity. I have been looking for a possible apprentice candidate for my Angel for quite some time now. Very few have survived that she tried to kill, and none have ever bested her, underhanded tactics notwithstanding. This places your resume at the very top of the pile..."

"What are you... You want me to be the bitch of your little elf bitch?" The nerve of this woman...

"That is hardly how I would have worded it, but-"

"You're insane." I cut her off. "Why should I even consider this offer of yours?! You tried to rape and kill me. You did rape and kill Ivy. Everything about you disgusts me more than even Piscary ever did. If I had the spit to spare, I'd spit in your face!"

"Why should you consider this offer? Perhaps because you are still an unbound Shadow, dear Rachel. For all your wits and power, a vampire can still pull sensations out of you that will make you beg to be bitten." She didn't throttle me this time. Instead, her voice turned sultry and caressing, leaving me wondering how I could ever think her plain. "Unprotected, it is only a matter of time before you slip up, and then the degradation will only end with death. There will be no respect, no carefully maintained balance, only the next bite and the vampire that can provide it. You will go to any length for it, give... anything. Your morals, your dignity, they both will be lost to you. I can keep this from happening, and at a far lesser cost than Cormel would ask. I do not know what he wishes to get from you, but now that he cannot control you through your lover, he will keep you on a much shorter leash. Perhaps even bind you, if he does simply give you to her outright. As for Ivy, well you understand what her protection would entail."

"And you'd be so much kinder, right?" I snapped, but inwardly, I was getting scared. I'd gone so long without having to worry about random predation by vampires that I'd come to simply dismiss it. Ivy's protection I had taken for granted. Cormel might still value me enough as a magical research project into post-first death soul preservation to offer me his protection, but as Nathalie said, he might keep much closer tabs on me now. I was cornered, but even then I knew one thing for sure; I would never follow Ivy's murderer anywhere, no matter how grim and hopeless my situation got.

"I would, actually." She cajoled me, but I could see her reaching the end of her patience. "You have seen the visions, Rachel. You must have seen the plentiful times. You know I am not a hard mistress. I have no desire to take you for myself. All I want is a companion for my Angel. She respects you, I have seen as much in her mind, and her desire to pass down her knowledge is a long standing one. I am offering you a chance to better yourself as a witch and live free of the threat my kind poses to you. It is a fair deal. We may have gotten off to a wrong start, but do not dismiss me rashly."

"The visions? I..." _The dreams I had... they were from her? _"Why? Why did I see this?! Why did I have flashes of your life?!" _Why did I have to watch Ivy die from the perspective of her murderer?_ Freud would have a field day examining the scars this would leave on my psyche...

"We forged an aura bond when I bit you, of course." She smiled at me so sweetly yet so venomously that, for a second, Skimmer's image was transposed over hers. It was definitely the blond vamp's trademark smirk. "Hmm, have your naive romantic expectations been broken? Did you believe that only love and trust could forge such bond? Foolishness. Any emotion will do. Fear, anger, hatred, pain, despair are all almost as good. You felt them all. What they might have lacked in quality, they made up for in quantity. The connection was potent enough to send more than simply emotions and impressions across. I know you lived through some of the more... interesting moments of my long existence. Perhaps you know that I was once human, or you witnessed my glorious first days? Or did the experience run more to the sultry? Did you see me take Skimmer for the first time? Or perhaps both Ivy and Skimmer at once? As I said, it was quite a night. You would have enjoyed living it from my perspective."

"You bitch." I whispered for what felt like the hundredth time tonight... or today, I had no way of knowing how much time had passed. "You know what? You can shove your offer where the sun don't shine. That's your ass, in case you need a reminder."

"I knew I was wrong to coddle you. If this is your final answer..." She sighed and finally rose, striding towards the door, but before she walked out, she turned around, an almost... humane look on her face. "I don't doubt you have seen how I first became a vampire, Rachel. Everyone I forged this kind of bond with has. I had a husband I hated and a son I loved, once. I have seen friends and lovers die. I do know loss as well. You may be letting grief steer you wrong. If I walk out this door, my help will be forever lost to you. You will have to make your own path."

"Keep making your own damn path out of here and out of my life, would you?" I answered, and the humanity melted away, leaving only the cold predator in its stead.

"Suit yourself." She smirked at me. "I will... let you rest now." She made it sound like a condemnation, which it was.

"Bitch." I half-muttered, half-sobbed, realising just how cruel leaving me alone actually was only after she left. She had taken two things away by exiting the room; her pheromones that kept the pain my body felt at bay, and her insufferable presence that stirred my fury. In its absence, nothing could block out the grief I felt, the crushing loss. Ivy was gone, and an empty shell of her was possibly lurking within a few meters of me, outside the spacious room I laid in. It was far too early after Kisten to lose her.

_No,_ a little voice in the back of my head told me, _it would always have been too early to lose her._

The hours passed in miserable silence only broken up by the ragged sound of my sobbing. I managed to sleep a little, but it was more like slipping back into unconsciousness than resting and didn't rejuvenate me. Time flowed sluggishly until finally, I opened my eyes and found green, piercing eyes looking back at me. The "spear" in my arm was gone. I felt like I'd been run over, backed up on then run over again, but it wasn't the soul-crushing agony of the vampire venom. My heart hurt like hell to make up for it, though.

"You're awake." The beautiful elf woman stated softly, a hint of what looked like genuine compassion in her eyes. "Good. Ivy has been asking after you."

"Ivy's awake?" I asked, my thoughts flowing about as quickly as molasses, which suited me just fine. The elf nodded her answer, her demeanour meek and subdued. I extricated myself from the tangled covers I had entangled myself into in my restless sleep and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing some of the unreal soreness in my muscles.

"What, no nasty words?" I asked when she stood at my side with her hands behind her back, as quiet and erased as she had been before our fight. "I broke your kneecap, as I recall. Your nose, too."

"I heal very quickly." She answered quietly. "It is one of the advantages of serving Nathalie. As for nasty words, I hold no grudges against you. My earlier intervention was nothing personal. Nathalie would not approve of this discussion, but I do believe she went too far yesterday. She can be quite rash when one of her line is hurt."

"Fuck me, I never thought I'd see an elf play servant to anyone but another elf, let alone an undead vamp..."

"I am aware of the irony of my situation." She replied without a trace of anger, her hands staying firmly clasped behind her back. "However, I find it suiting for a pure-blooded elf to be serving as a low-blooded master vampire's Scion. It is a fitting twist of fate."

"You lost me there. Don't bother," I cut her off before she could explain, too weary to put up with it, "it's the story of my life anyway..." Never seeing anything coming, never understanding my own feelings before it was too late... These things had cost me my life with Ivy. I couldn't believe I'd had only a day with her. It wasn't fair. I knew life rarely was, but this was just ridiculous... in a horrible heart-breaking way. "Is Jenks all right?" I asked coolly, stowing my hostility for her bitch mistress. Angel's regrets were obvious, at least.

"I broke the spell holding him down on the promise that he do nothing to harm myself or Nathalie. He has been in here to see you a few times, but he left when some of Ivy's other acquaintances arrived."

"Who?" I demanded to know, feeling my blood turning cold with dread in my veins.

"A young vampire named Erica, and a human man named Matthew Glenn, whom I believe is a FIB agent."

_Oh, sweet mother of god... _Erica. What was she going through? My own brother and I were pretty much estranged, but them? She and Ivy were so close. Plus, Ivy had died before passing her bloodline on to her child. Their mother had to be so angry, for all the wrong reasons. Way to tear up the family. The young vamp had to be in hell right now. And Glenn... Ivy said Glenn was starting to feel more for her than she could respond to. He had to be in a pretty rough place as well.

"Where is she?" I asked frantically, an irresistible protective urge to see her overcoming me. She would desperately need comfort, a very vulnerable position when in the vicinity of a master vampire.

The dry sound of pixy wings and Jenks' answer made me turn around with a sigh of relief. At least he was okay.

"Nathalie's talking to her one on one." Jenks' landing on my shoulder was not quite as seamless as usual. He didn't look too good; his clothing was in disarray, and I could hear him cuss silently. It was a bad sign. If only his pride was wounded, he would act flamboyant about it, taking Tink's name in vain left and right. Only when it was serious did he swear under his breath, as to not worry those around him. "I tried to talk her out of it, but fuck me, Rache, that undead bitch knows how to get her hooks into you when you're down. She won't touch Erica, I'm sure." He added before my impulse to storm in and turn Nathalie to ashes, headache or no headache, could become more than a spike in my blood pressure. "Besides, I can hear them, and she has no claim to Erica. There's no way she could pull that shit off twice. She's..." he listened intently for a second, "calming Erica down right now. Probably all show, but Nathalie's not harming her."

"Yeah, okay." I hated this but cooled off, for now, and mentally switched off my grief. I had to keep it together a bit longer. I could break down for good once I was out of here, but for now, I had to compartmentalize.

"How are you holding up?" He asked with gentle concern, his wings brushing softly against my neck, the closest he could do to giving me a hug. I couldn't answer him; my voice caught in my throat and came out as a choked sound of anguish. I was definitely not okay. "I know. Oh, Rache, I know. Hang in there. I called David. He'll be here soon, and we can get home. You shouldn't be driving in that state."

"Glenn." In my distress over Ivy and Erica, I'd forgotten all about Glenn. "What about him? How is he?"

"Rache..." Jenks began, and I could hear in his voice that whatever happened was bad. "He's... I tried to talk him out of it, but like I said, that undead bitch knows how to twist someone around when they hurt..."

"What did she do? Glenn?!" I shouted and jogged out of the room without waiting for a reply, leaving Nathalie's quiet Scion behind. Jenks cussed some more on my shoulder as my rapid steps jostled him, but he hung on right until we stood in the sun-drenched living room. The wall of windows was broken in one section where Ivy had plummeted to her death, a large, mate black shutter having sealed the hole against the elements of sunlight harmful to vampires. The tall black man was lying on the couch, his eyes shut and his shaved head shiny with sweat. "Glenn!" I was dizzy from the run and stumbled a bit, but in a second I was by his side. His massive chest rose and dipped slowly, and he had a pulse, and I quietly thanked God. "What did that monster do to him?" I had my answer after I gave him a quick once over.

He'd been bitten.

"She bit him?!" I asked while fingering his collar to get a better view at the clean mark on his neck, already adding this to the long list of things I wanted to stake Nathalie for.

"Nathalie, no." Jenks answered from his perch. "It was Ivy, Rache. He was with her just before you woke up. Nathalie had her blow-up doll over there make some calls on Ivy's cell. Erica and Glenn were those she could reach. She got hold of Ivy's mom too, but she doesn't have a sun-proofed car, or she'd be here. Small favours."

"Oh, Glenn, why did you..." A sudden, panicked thought occurred to me. "Ivy's an undead now! Did she infect him? Is he going vamp?"

"No." Jenks reassured me. "He's fine, Rache. He smells okay, she just took a lot from him. She didn't even rough him up or anything. Not a scratch on him, I swear. He's just sleeping it off. Still, it makes me sick just thinking about it."

"Oh, why did you go and do that, you silly cookie..." I whispered again.

"Grief, of course." Jenks seethed. "That, and Nathalie filled his head with some nonsense about the importance of Ivy's first meal."

"It is hardly nonsense, master pixy." Angel piped in quietly. "The first meal of a newly reborn vampire is important. It helps them awaken and adjust. The deeper the feelings of the host towards them, the greater the effect. Mr. Glenn was the only one available aside from myself to provide Ivy with the blood she needed. I would have offered to take his place, but he was much more suited to the task, seeing as he obviously cares about her."

"Whatever." Jenks flipped her off. "That little fairy whore still took advantage of his grief to help fix her own damn mess!"

"Nathalie acted with the best interests of her charge in mind." The raven-haired elf calmly defended her mistress. "Ivy is still her responsibility for a time. She has expressed her desire to stay in this city, but she will need to be recognised by Rynn Cormel and admitted back into his Camarilla first." A knock at the door made her turn away from us. "More of your friends, I wager. I will be back. Should you decide to speak with Ivy before you depart, she is in the same room Dorothy was in. She might be asleep, but I think she will appreciate it if you woke her up."

_Speaking to Ivy?_ I chewed on my lower lip as I considered it, torn. I knew more or less what to expect if I did. Heartbreak, tears, a woman who wore Ivy's face but wasn't her. A shell, a shadow. On the other hand, I owed Ivy a clean break from me. I wouldn't be her source of blood, and I certainly wouldn't be her Scion. I had to tell it to her face. She'd earned that much.

_Entre l'amour et la mort... I never would have imagined you would abandon her._ Nathalie's voice taunted me as it echoed in my mind. I didn't know whether I was a weak coward, a callous ass or simply a sane woman, but the sacrifice Ivy might require of me were too great. With a choked sound, I gathered my resolve and rose to my feet, beginning to make my way towards the room Ivy awaited me in.

As it turns out, she wasn't asleep when I pushed the door. She faced the window in her room, her back turned to me, her slender body wrapped in a cotton robe that had no doubt been swiped from the bathroom where we had shared a shower just a few hours ago. It was hard to believe it hadn't been a lifetime ago.

I almost fell to my knees observing her. There she was, my Ivy, basked in sunlight that glinted in her gold highlights, the bane to the undead. For one, hated second I believed with all my heart that she had somehow survived the fall, that it had all been a horrible, horrible dream I had just woken up from. Ivy began to turn around, a small, almost timid smile on her lips, her mien so calm and subdued she looked no more the part of a predator as a duckling. Only when I looked into her eyes did the illusion shatter. There was almost nothing there. She could stand into "the sun" like this because those were specially treated windows. The tip of her fangs peeked through her slightly parted lips; she wasn't used to their new length, and she didn't hide them properly. She was dead.

"Hello, Rachel." She spoke with her usual grey silk voice, as smooth and melodious as ever, yet sounding so terribly hollow.

"Ivy." I somehow managed to push the words past the lump in my throat. "How are you?"

"I'm... different." She spoke softly, her hand rising in front of her face, her eyes focusing on it intently as if she studied the slow flexing of her fingers and found it fascinating. "I know I'm different now. Am I... dead, Rachel? Is that why the world is so bright? So clear?" God help me, she sounded as innocent as a child, not at all like a perfect predator of the night.

"Yes." I murmured, my eyes burning with overflowing tears. "You... you died, Ivy. I'm so sorry."

"Why are you so sad?" Ivy walked slowly towards me, incomprehension on her pretty, innocent face. "I don't understand. I'm still here. See?" Her hand slowly rose to my cheek, her fingertip tracing the wet path a tear had left there.

"Your body is still there, Ivy, but your essence, what made you you is gone. Do you understand?" Her head tilted in quiet confusion. "Your soul is gone, Ivy. That's why I'm sad. Because of that, we can't be together anymore."

"I... scare you?" She asked, and I nodded truthfully in reply. "I..." She lowered her gaze to her chest and pressed a hand to it. "I know I should feel something here, but I don't... I don't like this, Rachel."

"I know. God, I know. You scare me, Ivy. I wish to God things hadn't turned out this way, but they have. I'm so sorry."

"But I've always scared you a little." She reasoned with the simple logic of a child. "Why can't we be together anymore?"

"Because you need things now, things I can't give you." I explained with a voice wispy with anguish. "You're not the woman I love anymore, Ivy. She died."

"So you're leaving me?" She lowered her head before she spoke, her short bangs falling in front of her eyes to obscure them from view. There was a knock at the door I barely heard and didn't remotely care about. With a trembling hand, I pushed those locks of silky hair away to look straight into the strong, vulnerable creature's eyes when I said that yes, I was leaving her.

My heart almost stopped in terror at what I saw. The cinnamon coloured orb staring back at me was no longer a flat, empty and soulless eye. There was something lurking within it, something viciously intelligent and calculating yet playful, like the eye of a cat playing with a mouse. A corner of Ivy's mouth lifted barely perceptibly in a nigh-invisible smirk. With a frightened gasp, I pulled my hand away, but not before that terrible eye winked at me. I stumbled backwards, almost straight into Rynn Cormel's broad chest. Strong, large hands steadied me effortlessly, but I was too busy staring at Ivy to care. It was gone. Whatever I'd seen in the depths of Ivy's eyes, if it all hadn't been a figment of my imagination, was gone.

"Rachel, Ivy." Cormel said flatly from behind me. "I hope I'm not interrupting something?"

"N-no." I stammered, still shaken and only wanting one thing; getting the hell out. "You haven't. I was j- I was just leaving."

"Ah. In that case, I would like a word with you first. Ivy, if you would excuse us?" He gave her a polite nod to which she didn't reply, as if she didn't understand what the meaning behind it was. She looked like a child again, but I was sure of what I saw. I wasn't quite clear on what it meant yet, that's all.

Only when we were out of the room could I spare enough worry to curse. Shit. It obviously hadn't been David at the door, but Cormel. He looked pissed, and with good reasons. Ivy siding with him had been one of the stronger bases to his claim of power. Now that both she and Kisten were dead, the foundation of the Cincinnati Camarilla's power was gone. Trouble ahead for him...

"I am not having a good day so far, so I will be to the point." Cormel stated after leading me away from obviously prying ears. "Now that you have so blatantly failed to safeguard Ivy's soul, what are your intentions regarding our accord?"

"What?! I just lost her, you bastard, and that's all you can think about?" Damn it, he wasn't even pretending to care anymore. I'd never seen him so angry.

"Her loss is unfortunate, however I have a very limited window to react to it before the stability of this entire city becomes at risk. I want this settled now, Rachel. Can I count on you to continue your research on your own, or do I have to tighten the noose?"

"I'm not letting you blackmail me, you ass!" I grunted and tried to shrug him off, but the undead was many times stronger than I was. He couldn't stop my mouth though. "You can shove your very absent soul up your ass! I wasn't doing this for you, I was doing it for her!"

"Have you made a deal with Nathalie, to be so confident that you can dismiss me?" He asked with a cruel, hard glint in his eyes. "I didn't think so." He turned smug, finding his answer in my silence. "Now, unless you wish to be Ivy's "welcome to the fold" gift, I would suggest keeping up your efforts, perhaps even redoubling them. I truly have no desire to cause you pain, but my goals are too important to let you turn away from them now. I will integrate Ivy into the Camarilla. I know that once her stupor dissipates, she will be a valuable asset, and she will be a perfect reminder of the fate that awaits you should you become lax in your efforts or complain too much for my tastes. Am I clear?"

_Fuck, I'm sick of those undead... _"Yes." I acknowledged grudgingly. I just wanted out of here. I was sore, tired, hungry and mourning. I felt like a hundred feet below rock-bottom.

"Do not make me crack the whip, Rachel. I'd much rather..." He was cut off mid-threat by loud footfalls in the hallway that made us both glance towards them.

"Mr Cormel." David growled politely at the undead. "I believe this is entirely un-gentlemanly. Would you kindly let my Alpha go?" The were was in full alpha mode, oozing authority and confidence, the effect only made more intimidating by the fact he wore his gunslinger outfit, complete with jeans, huge plated belt buckle, leather duster and cowboy hat. Slung over his shoulder was his big-ass vampire killer rifle, but what really nailed the effect was the very clear influence of the Focus in his voice. David was the Primal Alpha, the bearer of a demon-made curse that allowed him, amongst other things, to turn humans into weres. It added not only to his presence, but also to his natural abilities, and made him very scary when he put his mind to it.

"This place still stinks with death. I'd rather not add a few dozen bullet holes to the mess. You didn't kill a friend of mine, only manhandled another. I don't particularly want to kill _you_." He added as he casually gripped his rifle and worked its mechanism, the AK chambering a first round with a loud clack. I didn't miss the subtle emphasis he put on you, which suggested he wanted to kill someone, most probably Nathalie. Maybe he cared about Ivy more than I gave him credit for.

I could see the dilemma on Cormel's face. Backing off could be interpreted as a sign of weakness, something he could ill afford with a new, possible challenger to his authority. Ivy was slated to rule Cinci after all, no matter what claims Nathalie had briefly exerted over her. But on the other hand, he was standing in a freaking corridor, and David had an automatic rifle. Even an undead would think twice about going up against that. Sure, I was in the way, but the man was an unnaturally good shot. My own safety didn't really concern me here.

"Indeed. I will see you soon, Rachel." He backed off, releasing his death grip on my shoulder. "If you will excuse me, I still need to speak to Ivy."

"What an ass." David muttered under his breath and thumbed the safety on his gun the instant Cormel disappeared into Ivy's room. "Come here." He took me in his arms, the scent of were and aftershave mixing pleasantly in my nose, though my heart was too deadened for me to truly appreciate it. "Are you okay?" He asked me very gently. I shook my head in the crook of his neck, and his grip on me tightened as tears welled up once again in my eyes. "I didn't think so. Come on. Let's not give those bastards the satisfaction. Ceri was just a few steps behind me. I told the crazy woman she didn't need to come, but she insisted. She can be a lot scarier than any of those undead leeches." A quiet chuckle escaped me at the admiring tone of his voice. He was right there, but the tiny uplift to my mood didn't last.

As on cue, a loud slap reverberated through the apartment a heartbeat after he said that. A frantic, angry female voice came from the living room, the language not one I could recognise. I was still positive it was Ceri's voice, though. We arrived to see her shouting in a beautiful, swirling tongue that seemed more appropriate for long chants in moonlit forest clearings than verbal abuse. And it was definitely verbal abuse, the victim being no other than Angel. A bright red mark was clearly visible on her pale cheek, one that matched the small, delicate hands of my blond elf friend, whom by the way I had never seen half so pissed.

_What the hell did Angel say to her?_ I thought as spittle flew in her face and another slap landed with a clear sound on her cheek. Thin, bloody lines were left on her skin. Ceri had scored her with her fingernails...

"I gave up trying to split them up." A vaguely awake Glenn leaning slightly on the closest wall informed us. "All the black-haired one did was bow to her, and then Ceri was all over her."

"Glenn..." I touched his arm in concern while keeping an eye on the two women. "Are you okay?"

"I know you think I'm a tool for doing this," he rubbed the sore mark on his neck after nodding without a touch of enthusiasm, "but I needed closure. I needed to see Ivy was gone. It wasn't anything like her usual bite. I was only food to her. I can mourn her now." His jaw clenched, his pride obviously the only thing keeping him together.

"I'm sorry." I whispered, shocked that so many would be mourning Ivy. And she thought she was a monster in life. I wished she could see these people who loved her and understand just how important and loved she'd been.

"My lady, I..." The black-haired elf tried pointlessly to get a word in through the stream of obscenities Ceri was spouting like there was no tomorrow.

"I cannot believe that you would disgrace your station this way!" Ceri abruptly switched back to English. "Have you forgotten your bloodline's sworn duty?! You are a Guardian, for the love of God! Serving a monster who could callously murder one of the most decent, honourable women this world has ever known? What could possibly possess you to do such a thing?"

_Wait, she's a guardian? Dork! Green eyes and black hair? She told you all guardians had them. How could you not see it?_ Ceri had once explained to me the role Guardians played in elven society. They were supposedly these badass warriors entrusted with the safeguarding of royal lines. As I recalled, ancient elves had instilled specific dominant genetic traits in royal and guardian lines, blond hair and green eyes being the distinctive mark for royals, black hair and green eyes for their honoured guards. Quen was one, even with a human parent... and Angel was too, apparently. No wonder Ceri was upset. From her point of view, Angel was a traitor to her own people.

Ceri's hand met Angel's face twice again before the black-haired woman lost patience. Quicker than thought, Ceri's wrist landed into Angel's grip, her emerald green eyes turning as hard and piercing as they had been when she fought me.

"I offered you the deference due to your long-dead status, and this is your answer? You judge me, without even trying to understand me?" She snarled at Ceri. "I have my own reasons for serving her. I made this choice long ago, and I stand by it!" The air around them took on a charge, becoming thick and heavy. Both of them were tapping lines, blond and black hair getting tousled in a gust of wind from another dimension. I knew that if they had at it, not much of the living room would be left.

"Shit! Rache, David, Glenn, get the hell down!" Jenks shouted at us, but before the two women could turn the living room into an inferno, a deep, powerful voice toned, its gender impossible to discern.

"Enough!" Nathalie commanded with irresistible authority, having emerged from what looked like an office on the other side of the large central room. Instantly, her Scion released both the line and Ceri's arm, the blond elf standing down as well, though her eyes were still tossing daggers at Angel, while the Scion's face became unreadable at once. "Mistress Elf, I am afraid I cannot tolerate such a blatant attack on my Scion." She declared, coming to stand besides the taller of the two elves, her presence chilling everyone except her Scion. "I took her in when her own people turned their back on her. You do not hold the moral high ground here. She has merely done what was needed to survive."

"Just like a jackal living off your carrion." She snapped, turning her formidable ire towards Nathalie. "I should extinguish the unlife from you for what you did to Ivy, vampire." Ceri declared, not even slightly cowed by the aura Nathalie was pulling. "Give me one reason why I should not strike you twice dead where you stand!"

"Just one? Well, if you insist..." Nathalie mused as she slowly looked Ceri up and down, her cold grey eyes coming to rest on her baby bump visible beneath her sweater. "I'm sure your physician has warned you of the dangers vampire saliva poses to an unborn child. If I were to get a fang in, your precious child may suffer all its life for your rash actions. What kind of mother would endanger her offspring this way?"

"Do not underestimate me, foul creature." Ceri warned, her hair starting to float once more over an absent breeze. "You would never get close enough."

"I already did." Nathalie smiled broad enough to show the full length of her needle sharp fangs, her hand rising slowly in front of her face, a single finger on it extended. "Perhaps it is you who should not be so quick to underestimate me." She mocked Ceri as the elf blanched. Nathalie's fingernail was covered in blood, blood that I suspected matched the slow drip from the thin, bloody line on her cheek. Damn, the woman was fast. It just wasn't fair...

"You monster." Ceri was still angry, but I could see the vampire had shaken her to the bone. Her whole body trembled, her focus wavering. "You... monster." She repeated again and again until I put a steadying arm around her. Nobody, it seemed, was strong enough to defeat Nathalie. I felt thankful that so few vamps ever reached her age.

Staring her in the eyes, she suggestively licked Ceri's blood off her fingertip before turning her back to us dismissively. "This monster's thirst for blood and death is already slaked. I am growing tired of this. You came for Rachel, and now you have her. I want you all gone from this place, so I can settle my charges in peace."

"I'm not leaving without Erica." I protested, trying to steal a look past Nathalie into the office. The young vamp was there sitting in a chair, her back hunched as if a great weight was crushing her. I couldn't leave her here for Nathalie to toy with.

"I've got her, Rachel." Glenn offered, stepping up to Nathalie with his head high. "I'll get the kid out when she's ready. Maybe talk to her a little. We got along fine when her big sis introduced us."

"I said all of you, detective." Nathalie objected, her grey irises starting to thin in annoyance. "I do not believe I invited you to stay."

"Yeah, and all the clout in the world won't help you get away with assaulting a straight FIB agent in front of a witness. How about you indulge me?" One of Nathalie's eyebrows shot up in surprise at the human's gut. My pride of him did pretty much the same thing. I knew Glenn was a great guy, but this was in a league of its own. "Go on, Rachel. Take care of them." He addressed David, who answered with a grave nod. "We'll be okay."

"Rache?" Jenks whispered very quietly in my ear. "I think I'll stay for a little while too. You know, just in case." I nodded in acknowledgement, and a fraction of a second later, he was gone.

"Come on. It's time to go home now." David took my shoulder and guided me out, while I did the same with an arm around Ceri. Together we walked out, leaving friends, enemies and one terrible unknown behind.

"Silly, stupid elf!" Ceri berated herself once we were in the hallway. "I only had to blow every window out and the sun would have done the work for us. How dull-witted could I be?" She uttered several more curses before turning to me with huge, shimmering eyes. "I'm so sorry, Rachel. When she threatened my daughter, I... I just couldn't think anymore. I couldn't avenge Ivy. I'm sorry."

"Hey, hey." I shushed her even though I was on the verge of tears again. "I know what it's like. She's completely ruthless, and she's a freak of nature. Between her and that Scion of hers, she's damn near invincible. It's okay."

"No, it's not okay, Rachel." Her voice broke. "Ivy... she's gone now, and it's this monster's fault! Oh, Ivy... I'm so sorry. Rachel..." I held her close, her scent of green leaves mixing with the musk of were coming from David, whose arms came around the two of us, and the dual scents of redwood and vampire incense that was mine. We held each other for a long time, each of us remembering the woman Ivy used to be, a strong, determined protector ready to go to any length to keep her loved ones safe.

I knew we would all miss her terribly... but in the background of the grief and sorrow I felt, I couldn't get rid of the fear that took hold when I looked into Ivy's eyes and saw that malicious intelligence. Something told me I had not seen the last of Ivy Tamwood.

I hoped to God "something" was wrong...

* * *

With cold, narrow focus, my eyes tracked the black limousine as it emerged from the sun-proof access of the building I stood in. Warm sunlight, rendered harmless by the special armoured glass, heated my cool skin. In my hand, a cell phone, a number already dialled on the little screen, my thumb hovering over the "call" button.

"Playing them all was quite impressive, I must say, but this? Are you sure about this?" Nathalie asked from behind me. My eyes never left the car down below. "Once you press this button, you will be committed to your course of action. There will be no going back."

"I'm sure." I answered. The car stopped at a red light. It was only a few meters away from the end of the shadow cast by the building. It would be in direct sunlight in just a minute. "You opened my eyes when you killed me. Rachel's safety cannot depend on anyone but me anymore. There can be no more shady deals with the devil, no more conditional protection. I'm the only one who cares about her for her. No one else does. At best they would use and discard her, at worst kill her outright. I will not sit by and let this happen any longer."

"Hmm, no hard feelings, then?"

"I would have entertained some if you'd let her die. But you saved her, and you gave me your little gift. I think we're even now."

"I'm glad to hear it, Ivy. It would tear Skimmer apart if I had to kill you again."

"Your death would bring me nothing, Nathalie. Once I am the master of this city, with Rachel by my side, I look forward to a long friendship between us. Give Skimmer my best when you see her again, would you?"

"I will be sure to. Do you mind if I stay and watch the fireworks?"

"Not at all." The transversal light turned yellow. My immobile heart almost began beating again. The light turned green, the limo starting to move. Just as its tail bumper emerged from the shadow, I hit the call button. Every window on the limo was simultaneously blown from its frame, the armoured, sun-proof glass mostly intact even after it flew many feet into the air. Sunlight flooded the interior of the vehicle, instantly killing any undead inside. Gleefully, I savoured my victory. I had just killed Cincinnati's master vampire, the first step in reclaiming what was rightfully mine.

"Is that all?" Nathalie pouted. "I hoped for something a little more spectacular."

I only smirked in response. A second later, the incendiary charges I'd laid along with the shaped ones in the windows blew up as well. A fireball several meters in diameter erupted from the windows, guaranteeing that no one was left alive inside the limo.

"Is this more to your taste?" I asked innocently, making Nathalie laugh.

"Oh, Ivy... you truly are a wonder. How I wish you had been born to my Camarilla..." With a smile, she bowed to me politely. "Now, how else may I assist you before I go?"

I gestured to the soft cotton robe I wore. "I will need something to wear. I have a war to fight."

A/N: Phew... That was a long one. Hope it's not too much of a clusterf***... Anyone still wanna kill me, or can I come out from under my rock?


	18. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

A/N: How 'bout now?

A/N: Probably my weirdest one yet. I'm straying pretty far from canon with this chapter, but oh well... Credits go to **watch_yer_back **for infecting me with this plot bunny (the glaring violation of Hollows canon). If it was this long a wait it's partly because I had to reread a whole lot of Hollows stuff and gut my original outline to make everything fit. I hope it wasn't ALL in vain...

_Rachel..._

I didn't know to whom the distant voice belonged. It felt familiar, brought pleasant memories, of pleasure, of companionship and safety. Of home.

_Wake up, Rachel..._

Yet despite those things it evoked, the voice chilled me. There was an inflection to it I didn't like. It was fond, but mocking as well. There was hardness to it that felt alien.

_Wake up, my little witch..._

Out from the darkest corners of my mind, Ivy appeared, dressed from head to toe in wispy shadows. Her brown eyes held all the warmth and tenderness of steel on a cloudless winter night. With her hunger draped around her like a cloak, she stepped slowly, soundlessly, towards me.

_Wake up, Dear Heart. Wake up and smell the blood..._

Without warning, as gracefully as a lioness pouncing in for the kill, she lunged for me, her eyes going black in the space between one heartbeat and the next, her mouth gaping wide enough to swallow me whole, body and soul...

I awoke with a frightened gasp in the passenger seat of David's car, the remembered scent of vampire incense filling my nose with each inhalation. Panicked, I quickly glanced around, finding only a pair of familiar, concerned faces staring at me from the front seats. Of Ivy, there was not a trace. The grief my slumber had temporarily pushed away came flooding back in the wake of her absence. I remembered. She was gone, well and truly gone.

"Are you okay?" David asked me as the first tears spilled down my cheek. There were no sobs, not this time. I was too tired for them. "We're here." He added when I shook my head negatively. "Come on. Just a little farther."

So we were, I noticed. The familiar neighbourhood was drenched in spring sunlight, which was barely enough to chase away the remnants of my nightmare. My church, once the safest haven I had ever had looked so solitary and forlorn now that I knew I'd never share it with my Ivy again. The thought of being surrounded by all her stuff, by her scent and her furniture and all those reminders of the life we should've had together was enough to blot out the bright sun shining in the cloudless sky. I still had to do it. Ivy was gone; I had to face this cold hard fact before I could move on. Glenn, strange as it was to say, had the right idea letting her bite him. Hopefully, he'd broken free of his feelings for her. I wouldn't be baring my neck to her now, though, not after what I'd briefly seen in her eyes. The memory of that vicious, calculating intelligence hiding beneath a veil of newborn innocence was still enough to get me shivering.

I painstakingly extricated myself from the car, my body stiff even if I'd been immobile for a rather brief time. However Nathalie had purged me of her venom, it didn't feel like it had been a hundred percent effective. My skin felt thin and tender all over, and the sunlight was just too damn bright, as if I'd just come out of a much darker space than David's car and my eyes had to adjust. I ran my tongue over my perfectly normal teeth, and I silently thanked God witches couldn't be turned vampire; I'd be getting even more worried otherwise, because this is exactly how Ivy had described she felt while out at high noon...

"Rachel." David called out from the driver side of his car, making me turn around. "I've got a few things for you first."

I stood in the too-bright sun while he went through his attaché-case and came up with a thick manila envelope. "Here." He said as he handed it to me before drawing my splat gun out from the small of his back, "And, I think you'll want this too."

"What is it?" I asked, after checking the gun over out of pure habit and tucking it away at the small of my own back. The only reason I didn't push the envelope aside to deal with later was how very official it looked; that and it had Ivy's surgically clean handwriting on it, spelling out my name...

"It's everything Ivy wanted you to have, in case something happened to her." David explained. "Her living will, in a literal sense. When you feel a little steadier, I'll help you push what's left of the paperwork through, so don't worry about the stack. There's a few disks and a USB drive in there, and a check for you." David added when I began opening it. "Ivy left you about 5% of her death fund. More substantial than it sounds, I know." He smirked a tiny bit when my eye widened and I did a quick bit of math. If THIS was a mere 5% of it, then Ivy's death fund stood at about $20 millions, and the Tamwood-Randall estate was worth a whole lot more than I thought.

Along with the check were the disks and the drive David had mentioned. The USB drive had my name on it, the others were addressed to Erica and some person named Holly; to whom the former was addressed was obvious, but I'd never heard Ivy mention anyone named Holly before.

"Why do you have this?" I asked, wondering for the second time today just what was between him and Ivy. I knew the vampire had a soft spot for him, but as far as I knew, it was one sided.

"She came to me maybe a month ago." David answered. "Said she wanted to get her affairs in order. She was searching for Kisten's killer and it was starting to lead her into some pretty dangerous places, even by your standards. That's the excuse she gave me, anyway. I think she might have been lying, but it's obvious she was worried about leaving you alone. You know how she is, always with her plans..." He smiled a bit looking back. There was some obvious fondness there, which did shock me. The last time I'd seen him look at Ivy, he'd been quite uncomfortable around her... or was I mistaken? Could he have been smitten with her too? "I put her in contact with a few friends of mine who're in that line of work, and she entrusted everything to me once it was all done."

"She liked you, you know." It was a bit of a shot in the dark, but if he did like her, he deserved to know it was mutual... or it might make him feel worse, but I was honestly too tired to analyse the potential repercussions telling him. Maybe I wanted him to feel just a little bit of the misery I felt. Maybe my grief was making me lash out at those around me. It wouldn't be the first time. I'd been a bitch to Robby when our father died, too.

"I know." David answered, his head bobbing noncommittally. "I know. I liked her too, but... Hell, I don't think pursuing her would've been fair to Serena and Kally. Ivy's not... wasn't someone I could have just slept with and left alone in the afternoon. We were too much alike; we'd have hated each other or... not." He glanced at me piercingly, before adding with a hint of sad, knowing mirth, "Besides, I think you of all people understands how daunting it can be to meet someone you might change the way you see yourself for. I've never devoted myself entirely to one person, Rachel. I might have for Ivy."

"David... thanks. For everything." I said, conveying with my eyes my gratitude that he hadn't kicked me back, even though I deserved it.

"I'm still your Alpha, Rachel. You're still Pack. Don't be a stranger. We're here if you need us. You still need to pick a date to get your tattoo. Call Serena. She'll be real happy to hear from you."

I knew what he was doing, reminding me that my life wasn't over, that despite the huge ragged hole in my soul, I could pick the pieces up and keep on living. I felt grateful that he did, but it just didn't work right now.

"I will." I nodded to him anyway. "I just need... some time alone now, so I can process this. Please, Ceri." I cut off the blond elf before she could even protest. She would all but move in if I didn't stand firm, and I really needed to face the ghosts of the church alone. "Just a few hours. You can check up on me then."

Ceri made a grumpy, un-lady-like sound, looking for a second like she would push the issue, but she acknowledged my request and, after giving both me and David a quick hug, started walking towards Keasley's house. David gave me one last, long nod, and got into his car. I took one deep breath, and turned to face the church.

I didn't want to go in. God help me, I didn't, even though I felt exposed and vulnerable, picturing a vampire assassin behind the wheel of each car going quietly down the street, as if this wasn't an uncomplicated quiet Monday afternoon. Here I was, paranoid to the point of insanity while kids were playing in a nearby park, the normalcy of the sound like a blade drawn through my flesh. Life went on all around me. My life had been turned on its head and gutted, but Life with a capital didn't give a shit. It felt surreal, just like it had when Kisten died.

I went in.

Nothing had changed, but it still felt like walking through a dream to tread through the familiar, alien rooms. Everything felt stark and vivid, bringing back memories of the past two years. Scary memories, funny memories, sad memories... they were all there. The foyer, with Ivy's assortment of black coats, of various make and material. The shadow of the cross in the sanctuary, where Ivy had offered me to become her Scion for the first time. The pain amulet Ivy had confronted me with a... I don't even know how long it had been, but it was still there, at the foot of the wall where she had dropped it, in her fear of my admission of feelings. The living room, with Ivy's stereo system and large screen TV, the grey couch on which I'd spent so many nights watching amusingly lame action flicks with her. Skimmer's blood still stained it. The grey cushions were pretty much ruined. Her room, with her bed I never got to share with her, which smelled so much of her I couldn't stand to go beyond its threshold. The kitchen, still unbearably divided... in which a woman with hair the colour of sin, cut in short, stylish spikes with the tips iced in gold, dressed in a soft pastel blue silk dress, stood, her back turned to me as she gazed into the garden through the kitchen window.

Training overrode grief in an almost instant surge of adrenaline. "Almost", because for one second, I was back in that hated apartment downtown, about to fall on my knees before what I thought was my Ivy standing in the light of the sun. I'd never seen anyone with that hairstyle other than my vampire; I knew it couldn't be, but hope kept being the fickle bitch it had been all day and sucker-punching me. At any rate, my hand reached at the small of my back to grasp the splat gun there. It was pure instinct, and useless really; the splat balls it had once been loaded with had all gone to waste on Nathalie and were probably forming an interesting modern art picture on a wall back where I'd left the evil bitch.

"If you're a client, we're not open for business today. I must politely ask you to leave." I stated glumly, sick to death of having my emotions jerked around. "If you're here to try and kill me, today's really not the day. Come back next week. I promise I'll be in the mood to kick your ass then."

The woman, at least a head shorter than Ivy was, turned around slowly and faced me, making me let go of the gun instantly. Her eyes were a pale, faded blue, a shade softer than the silk of her dress, and filled with such a raw, intense hunger I thought for a second she was some kind of new, sun-proof variety of undead vampire. Lucky for me, I'd pulled straight A's in Inderlander biology back in college, and I quickly remembered what I'd learned about banshees, thus avoiding asking any stupidly embarrassing questions...

If one species in all of Inderland can go toe-to-toe with undead vamps for the top spot in the food chain, banshees are it. They're apex predators, capable of draining a person's life energy away, without even laying a finger on them, through their emotions. They can hurt you at a distance, but even then, you don't want a banshee's fingers on you. More than their emotions, direct contact allows them to strip away a person's aura and feed on it, leaving them to die a slow, painful death as their soul is exposed... and if that's not enough, a banshee can also toss around a grown man like a ragdoll, with roughly the same ease as a living vamp could. Maybe a little more if she is well fed.

Long story short, banshees are bad, BAD news, but when they plan to kill you, they usually don't bring along their year-old toddler, or at least they safely tuck them away before the blows and bullets start to fly. This one was holding her daughter close to her chest, and since banshees usually make maternal a euphemism for "if-you-so-much-as-look-at-my-child-funny-I-will-go-postal-on-your-ass", I felt I wasn't in any *immediate* danger. She wouldn't risk anything happening to her precious child during a brawl, so I was safe as long as the baby chair was out of sight.

"You must be Rachel." The banshee said flatly, a veil of... sadness? coming over her eyes to hide her thirst. "I'm sorry to intrude on your home like this, but... can I ask you if something happened to Ivy Tamwood?"

"How... how do you know Ivy? Who are you?" I demanded, warily placing the island counter between the other woman and myself. As far as I knew, Ivy knew no banshee, hell, nobody knew a banshee, not personally. Feeling anything towards one is an invitation to have her drain you. Emotions directed at them are twice as tempting, and even easier to drain. Actually loving one is an instant death sentence, but the sick(-er, -est) part is that banshees are the mother of all single moms. They actually need to consume those lethal amounts of emotions in order to reproduce. As cute as that baby she held was, and believe me, she was C-U-T-E, her mother had taken someone else's life to bring her into this world.

"My name is Mia Harbor. I am a... friend, I suppose, of Ivy. Please, I truly must know. Has something happened to her? Is she all right?"

"A 'friend'?" I said disbelievingly. There was no way Ivy could have been so dumb, ever. She was a competing predator; she knew how banshees worked, there was no way she couldn't. "That's bull. Look, I'm not in the mood. Tell me why you're here." I snarled the last of my words, violently enough that the baby banshee began to cry. Maybe she didn't like the taste of my emotions... I know I sure as hell didn't.

"Shh, Holly." Her mother soothed her, planting her lips very gently on the little girl's forehead. "There, there sweetheart." Looking up from rocking her crying daughter, Mia shot me a frigid glare, going from caring mother mode to hardcore banshee mode in a heartbeat. "I'm here enquiring after someone dear to my daughter and me both. The barest civility would be to answer my question, Ms Morgan." She said my name with clear, threatening precision, which made me wonder what was wrong with me for trying to piss off just about every species on top of me on the food chain in the last few days. A living vamp, an undead vamp (better, a thousand year old one), a were, now a banshee... Seriously, how many times had mom dropped me when I was a kid? You'd think she got a giggle out of it every time, I had so many issues now.

_Newt, you can barge in anytime now... oh, wait, it's daylight. She'll have to wait, but it would be such a nice surprise later... I could remind her she wants to erase me from existence, and then this would be the greatest day EVER!_

_...Wait a goddamn minute._

"H- Holly?" I stammered, shocked to hell and back. Mia's hair, her timing, and now this name? "Sh-she's 'Holly'?"

"Mine and Ivy's daughter, yes. Now, would you kindly tell me what happened to my mate before I truly lose my temper?"

"Your... mate?" Ivy had... 'fathered' a banshee child? "But... no, no that's impossible. Banshees kill their mates once they're done with them. Ivy couldn't be your mate. She couldn't." My mind was reeling, I simply couldn't accept this. Mia had to be jerking me around somehow. Banshees are like that; they'll toy with your emotions, making them grow and swell so they could feed on them. She had to be making a snack out of me for her growing baby girl. But then, how did she know to target me? How could she possibly know she would find a source of emotion here? How could she know what to call her daughter to get a rise out of me?

My answer was hanging from around Mia's neck, from a faded, purple ribbon. It was a pierced silver coin, one I had seen before, on the last night I spent in the I.S.'s employ. A wish. A freaking wish. I would have bet my soul it was Ivy's wish.

My back hit the counter as I stumbled backwards, my knees turning watery and refusing to hold me up. Ivy had never told me what she did with the wish I had given her. She'd ran off on our first night together in the church, right after she almost bit me (and came pretty close to bedding me, now that I think about it), and the morning after, her wish was gone. How the banshee fit into this picture, I had no idea, but her claim of knowing Ivy had just gotten a fair amount of credibility.

"Where did you get that?" I made a vague gesture around my neck to indicate what I meant. With familiar ease, the banshee reached for it, her fingers wrapping almost protectively around the metal disk.

"It was... a gift from her." Mia answered, her eyes briefly leaving mine and lowering in... shame? guilt? A guilty banshee? Could there even be such a thing?

"From two years ago?" I asked, and the other woman answered me with a slow, grave nod. "It's her wish, isn't it?" Another nod. "I'm the one who gave this to her... She was willing to give up most of what she owned for this. Why? Why would she give this to you?"

"Answer my question, and I promise I will answer yours." Mia offered me coolly. "I think we have a few things to tell each other." She added, pushing a chair for me and sitting herself down... right on Ivy's usual seat, in front of her computer. Holly cooed sadly on her lap, staring eerily at my vampire's safe spot, as if she were aware of its significance. Her cute baby face turned slowly to me as I stared, and I felt something like ice water dripping over my skin. The sensation lasted only a second, but it was enough to make me shiver. Holly made an unhappy baby sound and turned expectantly to her mother. Mia looked at her daughter with a mixture of fondness and exasperation, and just as the baby had done a moment before, her creepy blue eyes settled on me. There was no sensation of cold this time, but I still felt uncomfortable and unsettled, like I was standing naked before her.

"What was that about?" I questioned the mother. Her daughter had twisted around on her lap and was rather busy nuzzling her chest. Mia's eyes had drooped a bit, and she looked tired and resigned all of a sudden.

"Nothing serious. Your emotions are sustaining, but they were too bitter for this little picky eater. I had to feed her from my own reserves. It is tiring." She glanced at me, not fazed in the slightest by my appalled look. I could put two and two together. Mia had just fed from me! Heck, the little baby had just tried to feed from me! "I didn't hurt you, and I took only what the law grants me. Don't act so injured." She chastised me, her tone completely dismissive. Have I mentioned banshees are kinda hard to like? "You're giving off enough grief to sustain us both for a week." No, her tone wasn't actually dismissive, I realised. It was simply flat; she was struggling for composure. "Ivy truly is dead, isn't she?"

"Yes." I barely managed to breathe out around the knot in my throat. "She was murdered... last night."

"Oh, Holly, I'm so sorry." Mia whispered, her voice softer than morning fog. Sparkling, crystalline tears began spilling slowly down her cheeks. "How did it... she was killed? How?"

Wearily, I ran my hands in my hair, feeling completely numbed. The overload was complete. Too much had happened in too short a time. Ivy getting shot, my stupid, overcompensating mistake with Marshall in response to her kiss, Skimmer getting out of jail and into the arms of an undead who raped her, Nathalie revealing that she was Ivy's master and then murdering her, Ivy who may or may not be playing everybody for a sucker, Cormel who would probably try to bully me into some magical experiment or another, Lee who would probably make another attempt on my life now that he had a clear window of opportunity... I'm pretty sure I was forgetting some, but you get the point. The cup was fucking full. I couldn't add those two banshees and what Mia claimed they represented to the whole mess, at least not without a full cup of coffee and maybe a spike of something strong in it.

I shifted restlessly from foot to foot before the coffee maker, Mia's gaze seemingly boring a hole between my shoulder blades, probably in response to the surge of grief I experienced when I realised the grounds hadn't been changed, just like they always were whenever Ivy had a say about it. My hands shook so badly as I did something as simple and familiar... I didn't think I could do this. Every little detail reminded me of her; I couldn't even get enough of my wits together to explain to Mia why Ivy was dead. I couldn't stay in the church, our church... but I knew I had to. It was the only remotely safe place in town for me.

_That's why she gave me the money..._ I realised with a bitter, private chuckle. She'd planned ahead for me, so I had the means to get out of Cinci if something like this happened. Thanks to Ivy's foresight, I was now worth half a million dollars. Plenty enough to uproot my life somewhere else should the need arise. Yeah. My wonderful obsessive planner.

The coffee I poured myself tasted like bitter, liquid ashes, but the jolt of caffeine chased away enough of my bone-deep fatigue to get my thoughts in a semblance of order. In a dull monotone, I recounted the events of the past few days to the silently crying banshee, from the run gone wrong from last week to Nathalie losing control and tossing Ivy through a tenth story window. Her reactions seemed sincere, at least. Her pain over Ivy's death, while it didn't seem to match my own, looked genuine. With my side of the bargain fulfilled, I sat down and looked to the banshee expectantly.

"So you know how she died." I said quietly, drained beyond belief. "Now, you said you would tell me how you know Ivy once answered your question. Start talking."

"As promised." Mia nodded in agreement. "I met Ivy for the first time some five years ago, while she worked at the I.S., in the homicide division. She called me in as a consultant regarding one of her cases, one that apparently involved a murdering banshee."

"Not as a suspect?"

"No. I volunteered my name to the I.S. long ago, Rachel, so they can call upon me should one of us go on a murdering spree. Banshees have much in common with vampires." She replied calmly, a shadow of a smile on her lips, as if she'd made a bittersweet joke only she understood. "Like them, we police ourselves in an effort to preserve our fragile reputation. I've spent the past century holding my kind in line. As for the guilty party, the tear that supposedly cast blame on one of my sisters belonged to one of my long dead victims. It had been planted, by no other than Ivy's partner at the time."

I blinked.

"Okay, that explains how you met her, but how did you go from helping her with a case to... this?" I asked, my eyes coming to rest on Holly's cute baby face. She didn't really look like Ivy, but she didn't really look like Mia either. Her hair was a pale, pale blond, and both her mothers had raven-wing hair. I had no clue, however, how many traits baby banshees inherited from their parents. It's not like Ivy had the necessary equipment to knock Mia up, so I doubted they swapped bodily fluids... and that was one line of thought I didn't feel like following to its conclusion.

"Do you know what Ivy was like back then?" Mia asked. "She was strong and wilful, very smart and beautiful, yet utterly broken. Her bloodlust drove her to the brink of madness because she thought it was savage and ugly, that she could never find beauty in her vampirism. Her soul was wracked with self-loathing. The only thing keeping her sane was the thinnest illusion that somehow, her thirst for blood was a separate, parasitic part from her. I broke that illusion to feed on her."

"You what?!" I almost shouted, making Holly cry once more. "You bitch, she was so fragile, and you...!" My heart pounding in my skull, I half stood, my outrage making me forget just how dangerous Mia truly was and how poor my shape was. "You hurt her just to make a snack out of her. How can you live with yourself knowing you're this fucking selfish?!"

"Yes, I was." Mia agreed. "I shamed her out of spite, because I believed she was wallowing in self-pity. I showed her she knew nothing of true hunger. For a living vampire, bloodlust is little more than a sexual drive. Just like sex, she could have made it more, made it whatever she wanted, as beautiful as she wanted."

"She was abused since she was sixteen! Twisted around like a kitten's ball of yarn! She's not a banshee, so screw you and your "whose angst is bigger" pissing contest!"

"It is what banshees do, Rachel. Everyone we meet is a potential prey. I played with her feelings, consumed them and hated myself for doing it, but not nearly as much as she hated herself. When I realised how feeble her grasp on life was, I made my offer to her for the first time. She had nothing to live for, and so I asked to be close to her, to use her pain to kindle a child within myself."

"You... you..." _Oh, my God. She offered Ivy... My God._ "You offered to kill her." I barely managed to breathe out, my face draining of blood and sudden dizziness overtaking me. During one of Ivy's vulnerable moment, that creature had offered to help her die.

"Never in so many words, but yes, I did. I said I could give her what she wanted and more, thinking that was a painless, shameless, maybe even meaningful, way out. I figured she didn't have the courage to do it herself. I overestimated the depths of her despair." She smiled that terrible, sad smile once more, her eyes distant in memories. "Or perhaps I underestimated her willpower. Nevertheless, something changed in her. Knowing that the tear was a decoy put her on the trail of her murdering partner. She framed him and had him arrested, then began fighting the system that, as you put it, abused her since she was sixteen. She left homicide investigation to become a runner. I believe that is where she was paired with you, by the way."

_Wait, so in a twisted way I actually owe you for even meeting Ivy in the first place? _I stayed quiet. I didn't trust myself to speak yet, or not to try and throttle her, so I let the banshee continue.

"Once the case was closed, Ivy swore off blood. She tracked me down and sought me out, believing I could help her. Her resolve to accomplish her goals was so strong that I couldn't turn her away. I helped her stay on the wagon for three years."

"I don't believe you. It's not like she was alone, she didn't need to seek you out." Ivy still had Kisten back then. Heck, she was still _with_ him. They were closer than brother and sister, she didn't need to go to some banshee, no matter how much she may have impressed her.

"I assume you mean Kisten Felps." Mia stared into my eyes with vague haughty mockery, as if she dared me to doubt her closeness to Ivy again. "Ivy's feelings about her bloodlust are not shared by many of her kind, if any at all. Her struggle was much closer to what a banshee deals with than a vampire."

_I don't understand, Ivy, I never have! Blood is blood, love is love!_ An echo of Kisten's voice rose from a distant, sealed off corner of my mind, a memory dating back from around the time Ivy bit me for the first time. Skimmer wasn't any better either. Mia was right, even the vampires who loved her the most didn't understand what Ivy wanted.

"As I said, I helped her. I was her sympathetic ear, and she was mine in return."

"Yours? Sorry, but you don't really look like you'd have much use for that." I stated bluntly, making Mia's blue eyes focus back on me. As far as she'd shown me, the banshee was ice cold. She didn't look like the type to cry on anyone's shoulder.

"Everyone needs to talk sometimes. Try spending a few centuries protecting people who distrust you, despise you out of hand, or keeping a hunger the likes of which you have never experienced in check, then tell me I'm not the type to need a friend." Mia replied dully, as if she were recalling painful but old, familiar truths. "That's what Ivy was to me for a few years, a beloved friend. We understood one another. Believe me or don't, it's the truth."

"I thought banshees couldn't have friends." I said more meekly, a little embarrassed by the rudeness I'd just displayed. I guess I can be as prejudiced as anyone else sometimes... "That you drain them without even meaning to, and it's the same for your mates."

"The reputation we have for doing this is well earned, but I didn't trick her in order to feed. Ivy came to me, I didn't hunt her, and our friendship was mutual. Yes, I partook in Ivy's emotions, but only with her consent. I fed on her pain, not her respect for me. Not once in the three years our friendship lasted did I hurt her."

"While it lasted? So you had a falling out? You said you knew..." I stopped for a second, doing a quick bit of math in my head. Holly's age, plus the year she'd spent in her mother's womb... "You stopped being friends... around the same time she gave you the wish... and she gave you the wish around the same time you got pregnant." Brownie point for my basic math skills, right? Right. Now, what the implications of that timing were, I had no idea.

Again, Mia's fingers wrapped around the wish at her neck, her knuckles turning white as she squeezed it, her face shutting down briefly before becoming smooth and beautiful once more. "Holly was conceived that night." She finally answered with a wavering voice. She cleared her throat once, and her voice matched her face as well. She became a perfect, emotion-less porcelain doll. "She stumbled into my house, still teetering over the edge." Her eyes turned a little colder as she stared at me and continued. "I know what happened between the two of you. In your ignorance, you tripped all over her instincts and almost pushed her into sinking her fangs in you. It was quite an accomplishment for her not to have done so. She wanted to thank me for that, for everything I'd done for her throughout the years. She believed it would have been far worse if it hadn't been for me, and so she handed me this, hoping it could give me a chance to achieve my own goals. Your wish."

"It's spent." I noted, the tarnished aspect of the silver coin giving it away. "What did you wish for?" Mia looked far too tragic for me to ask this question casually. I could see her mask cracking and the river of boiling pain running beneath.

"I used it right away." Mia answered in a murmur, holding her baby girl closer, as if she found some comfort in the gesture. The baby, sensing her mother's distress, cooed cutely, which did make something vaguely shaped like a smile appear on her face. "I wished for the one thing I could never have. I wished for my dear Holly."

"But you… why would you need a wish for that?" I stammered in confusion. "You aren't infertile; I mean you offered Ivy… Why?"

"I wished for a child that would not require my taking of someone's life." She amended. "I'm over three hundred years old, Rachel. For over a century and a half I've fought my urges to mate; I've seduced and betrayed, I've killed, mostly those of my kind who stepped out of line. I'm not a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but never once have I killed to mate. I should have raised six daughters by now, yet Holly is my first.

"When I met Ivy, I was at the end of my wits and resigned to accept a compromise such as the one I offered her, to take someone's life freely given to me. Her presence in my life put those plans on hold and bought a respite to my dream of conceiving a child without killing someone in return. My hope was that the wish would alter my physiology somehow, or grant me a new ability, or simply impregnate me without the need to mate. I was wrong. All it gave me was knowledge."

"Knowledge? Of what?" I asked curiously, knowing that wishes rarely did give you what you wanted how you wanted it. Wish for eternal life, and you won't get eternal youth, wish for great talent and you won't get recognition, wish to lose weight, well, sorry for your liver. You get the picture. Wishes are a bitch like that.

"Ancient knowledge." She replied, her eyes growing distant and unfocused as she revisited the visions her wish had granted. "Most of it was history, my race's past, all the way back to the time when banshees lived in symbiosis with humans instead of preying on them. Back then, we were worshipped as merciful goddesses by humans. We watched over them, made sure that they had nothing to fear when the night fell. Some of them had certain traits, perhaps genetic ones, which allowed them to mate with banshees gently, without having their life essence sucked out in the process. We took them for ourselves as treasured companions in exchange for our protection."

"Banshees could reproduce without killing once?" For any inderlander living today, that was almost inconceivable. Banshees were damn near bogeywomen in this day and age, ever since vamps got serious about their PR programs around the Turn and got bumped down the scary scale. "That's… but what happened? How come you don't find mates like those anymore?" Had there been genetic traits in the human genome that faded with time, forcing the banshees to evolve into what they were today?

"The elves happened." Mia answered sourly, her angry eyes becoming... vamp black? "With your reputation, I assume you know of their ages-old war with demon-kind?" If I hadn't felt like Nathalie had ripped out my heart when she snuffed out Ivy's life, I would have grimaced at that. As it was, I just nodded curtly.

"Magically speaking, elves could go toe-to-toe with demons without much trouble, but I'm sure you know that demons have more than magic up their sleeves. Their great strength and polymorphic abilities inflicted dreadful casualties upon the elven troops. Mythical beasts and creatures out of a nightmare, they had no shortage of imagination when it came to bringing new horrors to bear on their enemies."

"In desperation, the elves decided to play god and create a race of shock troops by using their genetic knowledge. Once they isolated desired traits from demons and banshees and instilled them within a potent targeted virus, they unleashed their creation upon the entire planet. Comparatively few humans were infected, only one very specific group, in fact; those precious few who could safely mate with us. All of them died horribly within a few short months, and all of them were reborn as soulless, deadly creatures with the strength of fifty men, who could mend their bodies by drinking the blood of their adversaries." Her eyes narrowed, her voice filling with ice that coated my spine. They were filled with that great anger and sorrow only witnessing crimes against humanity could inspire. "That is what happened to our chosen's, witch. They became the very first vampires."

I damn near fell off my chair. Ivy, Kisten, Erica... they were all living weapons? If what she said was true, then the elves had even more to answer for than I thought.

"They were perfect killing machines." Mia continued. "From their old lives, their affinity with the life force, that allowed them to gently share aura, was warped into an ability to brutally tear it off through the blood of their victims and wrap it around themselves. It afforded them protection and guaranteed that their soullessness would not kill them in the short term. They had the herculean strength of demons and the hunger of banshees, twisted into a lust for the living blood that fuelled their unlife. Their lack of soul robbed them of any feeling of decency or mercy; they were viciousness made flesh. Scores of the other humans, the ones not infected, became a source of food for them, given freely by their elven masters. On the battlefields of the Ever After, the reckoning of the elves lasted three long, blood filled decades. Demons and vampires died in droves, but after these thirty years, the elves' creations bit the hand that fed them."

"The virus they had unleashed was more adaptive than the elves figured. To facilitate its spread, it became blood-born, and muted the mindless lust for violence the vampires had experienced. They regained the ability to think and reason and turned on their masters. All of them escaped the Ever After into the world of humans."

"Outside of elven control, the vampire virus evolved and adapted further, and they gained other abilities as well. First they learned to infect others with the virus, then to transmit it to unborn children through their mothers. Hence the first living vampires were born, blessed with a soul and a regal grace. They prospered and flourished, while my ancestors were shunned and wasted away. Every banshee child from that time onward had to be born of a tragedy, and they cried over each of them."

Those ancestral banshees weren't the only ones crying. I was too, in the respectful silence due to the scope of the tragedy she had revealed. I believed her. It definitely sounded like the draconian methods the elves favoured. They'd done something pretty similar to demons, too, by stunting their children's magical abilities and creating the witches. When elves couldn't win, they made bloody sure nobody could. Nice to see that Trent kept that tradition alive...

_I'm aware of the irony of my situation_, Angel had said, _However, I find it suiting for a pure-blooded elf to be serving as a low-blooded master vampire's Scion. It is a fitting twist of fate._ Sounds about right.

"Why would it show you that?" I murmured weakly as I wiped the tears away and took a sip of lukewarm coffee. "What were you supposed to gain from that?"

"Understanding." Mia answered just as quietly. "The wish showed me how these precious humans were changed, and what happened to these gifts that made them so. It would be... difficult to explain, the English language has no words to express how banshees see the world. The wish altered my perceptions of living vampires, allowed me to understand how I could mate with them without consuming their life essence in its entirety. In itself, it wouldn't have been sufficient. No living vampire, no inderlander for that matter, would have believed me had I explained this. We are notorious for making up deceiving little stories such as these. No one in their right minds trusts banshees these days, or so conventional wisdom tells. That's why this knowledge was also implanted in Ivy's mind at the same time it was in mine, so she knew I wasn't deceiving her. It gave me both the means and the opportunity."

I made a vague sound of unhappy understanding. This situation was starting to make sense, even if I didn't like what I was hearing much. Mia had made it sound like she and Ivy were estranged earlier. What had driven them apart if they truly had conceived a child together?

"I gained a daughter that night, but I lost a friend. I panicked. I couldn't let this one chance pass me by, so I used the one mate this damn wish had given me. Ivy was still reeling and vulnerable from her encounter with you. She feared she wouldn't be able to refrain from walking into a bar and ravishing the first stranger she made eye contact with. I toyed with that fear. I amplified it, made it unbearable, and at the same time, I swore to her that I would keep her from breaking her fast if she spent the night with me. She would give me what I wanted, and I, what she needed."

"You abused her." I swallowed my sadness, feeling the first bubbling of anger rising again in my blood. "Don't hide behind your bullshit fair exchange, you just used her in her moment of weakness."

"I know, witch. I was there." Mia growled at me. "I held her in my arms while she whispered to me how she didn't want this over and over again, but in the end, I made her give in. I had never seen her cry once before, but that night, she cried while we made love, when I kissed her, when I pleasured her, when I sated her and quieted her raging instincts. She cried when I merged my being with hers and pulled a part of her soul into myself, to be the foundation of Holly's life. It still lives within her to this day. For what it's worth, I was gentle, attentive even. For me, it was the most wonderful night of my life; I cannot even imagine how beautiful it would have been had I not tainted it."

"She wouldn't look at me once we were done. Every time I tried to hold her, she pulled away. I wanted to keep her with me, but she stayed only as long as necessary to get herself under control. A few hours later, she left me alone in my bed, pregnant with our daughter. She hated me, but at least she didn't hate herself any more than she already did. A year passed and Holly was born. Ivy was there. She told me she wanted to be part of our daughter's life. I like to think that she would have eventually forgiven me."

"She shouldn't have. You were no friend to her." I seethed, completely pissed off at the beautiful woman once more. "You're no better than Piscary or Nathalie. No better than elves or demons. A friend wouldn't have done what you did. You used her instead of just-"

"Save your breath, Rachel. I don't need you to lecture me." Mia cut me off, her tone anything but aggressive. "To you Holly must not look much like Ivy, but you don't have my eyes, my senses. Holly is the very picture of her. I love her with all my heart, but she is a constant reminder of what I gave up in my haste to conceive her. I might have had a family now instead of raising her alone, if only I hadn't jumped the gun and betrayed Ivy's trust. I only realised that I wanted more from her almost as badly as I wanted Holly once the deed was done."

"Wishes are a bitch like that, but for once I think someone deserves it." I spat at Mia, but she just sat there and took it, gazing lovingly upon the face of her perfect daughter. Somewhere along the storytelling, the baby banshee had fallen asleep, and Mia shifted her hold on her to something more comfortable.

"Perhaps I do, but Holly doesn't. She was inconsolable all of last night. I knew that something terrible had befallen Ivy, but..." She blew out a long sigh and stroked her daughter's plump cheek with a gentle finger. "She deserved to know Ivy. I wish she had forgiven me, if only for our daughter's sake. It doesn't matter now, I suppose. It's time for me to leave. Holly needs a nap."

"Wait." I called her out harshly before she could walk away, picking up the manila envelope David had given me. "Ivy left something to your intention. Not for you," I added when a glint of hope shone in her pale eyes, "for her." I pointed my chin at the sleeping Holly and slammed down the disk marked with the baby banshee's name on the table. "I don't think _you_ were forgiven in the end." I barely recognised my voice, it was so hard, so cold, so angry. The barb was cruel, but I was so upset I didn't care. I gave Mia a stony glare while she picked the disk up and walked away. I think she might have been crying.

"Goodbye, Rachel." She said, facing me one last time. Yep, there were tears. Bully for me, I can make a grown banshee cry. "You'll never see me again." She turned to walk, the afternoon sun glinting in her gold highlights that were a twin to Ivy's, but before she left, she paused, her nostrils flaring as if she smelled something in the air. "The heartbeat of Cincinnati is changing. I can feel it. A storm is brewing. Watch yourself, Rachel Morgan."

_Poser_… I thought dismissively over her cryptic warning. Right about now, Cinci could burn for all I cared. I didn't need to meet someone else who abused the woman I loved today. I really didn't.

Alone, and with Ivy's spot empty, I sat down in front of her computer, entering my little used login to access it. I was never a technology type of gal, unlike Ivy, and my desktop was pretty much bare. I did, however, get a sad smile out of the wallpaper she'd given me, a picture of me she'd taken with Jenks as her accomplice. The pixy was fluttering behind my head, using his whole body to give me bunny ears while I struck a pose for the camera. They both had quite a laugh at my expense afterwards, and Ivy told me I could use her computer only as long as that picture was there.

After sliding the USB drive into one of the sockets, I reclined briefly on the kitchen chair, rubbing my eyes until my drowsiness cleared away. There was a video on there and a couple of files. Since the video had been tentatively labelled "watch_me_first", I clicked on its icon first. A window came up, showing the spot I was standing in, except that it was occupied by Ivy, not me.

"Rachel." The message began. "I've tried long and hard to come up with an opening sentence that wasn't a complete cliché, but I've failed. I guess I'll just have to say it the way it is. If you're watching this, I'm probably dead." Despite myself, and the tears I couldn't stop falling down my cheeks, I snorted. "I know, that sounds horrible, doesn't it?" She smiled straight at me through the lens of the camera, making my heart just fucking die. "I don't know how or why it happened, but I hope that you're all right. I hope that you… didn't have to do it in self defence. I hope that… I don't know, that my death meant something. That I died protecting you. Don't feel bad if I did."

I sobbed once, a terrible, ragged sound that hurt almost half as bad as the ache in my heart. She hadn't. Her death had been such a terrible, terrible waste, a youthful mistake coming back to bite her in the ass in the most unfair and disproportionate way.

"I know that I seemed distant in the last few months. After last Halloween, I got restless. When I learned that Kisten's killer had almost bound you, I couldn't sleep anymore. I wasn't there when you needed me, when Kist needed me, and I almost lost the two of you. I kept imagining what would happen to you if Jenks and I weren't around to get your back anymore, and it scared the crap out of me. You're so strong, Rachel, the strongest person I know, but you've made so many enemies, too many for you to face them alone. You play by the rules, you refuse to compromise your morals… In a way, you're too good for your own good. I admire you greatly for it, but it will get you killed."

"On this drive, you'll find what you need to avoid that. You always say that I plan things to death. You were just slightly wrong, I was planning for my own death." The files' icon lit up, and other windows popped up on screen. They showed pictures, addresses, paper trails, transaction records, bank statements, all of them tied to shady or shadier characters of the Cincinnati underworld. Some of the names I recognised; Trent Kalamack, Lee Saladan and Rynn Cormel were all on there. It was a comprehensive dossier of most of the illegal activities of Cinci. Holy crap… If I went to Glenn with this, we could clean up the city faster than these criminals could say "spit".

_I can land Trent's ass in jail._ There was all I needed to finally nail the elf once and for all. I couldn't believe all the stuff Ivy had gathered on him. I knew she was good, but this was almost unfair for the other side.

"I know what you're thinking." Ivy's voice brought my attention back to the playing video. "I know that you'll want to use this information I'm giving you to bring in as many of these people as you can, but I must implore you not to. Even if you nailed every criminal in Cinci, there will always be more to take their places. This city isn't a perfect place, but it could be a whole lot worse, especially for you. Use what I'm giving you to make yourself safe. For once, please listen to me, not your conscience." She stopped for a long, slow breath, her eyes shutting as if she were gathering her resolve. "Promise me that if worse comes to worst, you'll use this."

The other file, the one that hadn't automatically popped up, filled the screen. This one contained three columns, one stating names, the second either buildings and addresses or the make and model of cars, along with their plate numbers, and the last seemed to be phone numbers. "I've been doing more than just gathering information. It wasn't enough, not this time. Everyone on this list you can kill by dialling the numbers in this file, provided they are within the building or the car indicated. I've… lied to you a lot. Since I bit you the last time, I haven't taken a single run. I was always out planting bombs, staking out hideouts, sneaking into places I didn't belong. I'm sorry, but I knew you wouldn't approve. I had to do it behind your back. I'm truly sorry."

"Don't be." I answered her numbly. To think I ever believed myself to be in the same league as her as a runner… It was unreal what she had accomplished in six months. For every straight cop in this city, it would have been the work of a lifetime. Maybe Ivy had inside access, but still…

"This is all I can do for you. I can only hope you'll be okay and live a long and happy life. I would only ask three things from you now. First, there are two disks in the package David gave you. I think you can figure out to whom the first one goes. There's an address where I would ask you to take the second one. The woman who lives there…" She inhaled deeply, her face scrunching up a little in pain. "Give it to her and tell her…" Another pause, even longer this time. "Tell her I forgive her. She'll understand."

Swell…

"Secondly, if you could keep an eye on Erica for me, make sure she doesn't get into too much trouble, I would be grateful. She's innocent, and I want it to stay that way. Be there for her as much as you can. She needs a big sister."

"The last thing I want you to do is the most important one. Stay away from me at all costs. No matter how much I look like my old self, don't listen to me, don't let me guilt you into anything. I'm dead, Rachel. I'm gone, and nothing can bring me back. If you don't remember this, I'll consume you."

I heard her voice. I even felt somewhat confident I understood what she said and could heed her warning, but in that instant, I saw a flash of a malicious brown eye winking at me. A little voice told me that could be easier said than done.

"All that's left is my final goodbye." Ivy said once her warning was delivered. "It was… I… You were… Oh, for the love of blood, I'm dead, it's not like I'll have to live up to this." She shook her head and smiled to herself. "I had a nice parting line planned, but I suppose I can take a line from your book and wing it for once." She cleared her throat, but her voice was still raw with emotion. "I love you, Rachel Morgan. With all my soul. Stay safe, my Dear Heart. Maybe we'll see each other again someplace, sometime. I'll be waiting."

The sun had set before I got back in touch with reality enough to realise I was still staring blankly at a sleeping computer screen. There were icicles floating on my coffee it was so stale and cold. My heart felt pretty much the same. I stood up to dump it in the sink. The kitchen was filled with gloomy shadows, but I didn't bother with lights. I didn't feel like light.

The mug slipped from my fingers to clatter in the sink. All at once, I crumpled into a heap on the linoleum floor, too weak to move. I hurt. God, did I hurt. The perfect outfit Ivy had given me needed a wash in the worst way. My hair was mated and dirty. My eyes burned with sleep and tears. My skin felt too tight, too thin. My muscles and bones ached. My chi was still strained and it made sure I knew how much it appreciated my earlier displays of power. I was at the end of my strength. I'd never been so thoroughly torn to shreds. The sobs overtook me again and I cried in darkness, the powerful kickass witch beaten to a bloody, broken pulp.

An unknown amount of time passed. I managed to scrap what was left of me together. Quivering slightly, I stood up and stripped out of my once beautiful clothes. The shirt was a mess, a sweat- and blood-stained ruin. The tough leather pants had fared better, but the sexy underwear was a total loss. I didn't care about any of this, really, they were just random facts I absently noted as I scattered the clothes in my room. Like a man on death row, I walked into my bathroom, heading straight for the shower stall. Scalding water and steam surrounded me, hurting like hell when it poured over the fresh bite mark Nathalie had left on me. It was going to scar, I just knew it, but as much as the thought of seeing her mark on me in the mirror every morning disgusted me, at least it didn't feel like she had made me even more sensitive to vamp pheromones. Small favours.

I felt only slightly less dead after the shower. I towelled myself up, went through the motions of readying myself for bed. It wasn't even midnight yet, but I was about to die from exhaustion anyway. I almost started crying again when someone knocked at the door.

In my frustration, I opened it like a mad woman, screaming at the top of my lungs for whoever was out there to go the fuck away… or I would have if that certain someone hadn't been a 5' nothing, younger, goth version of Ivy.

"Erica." I said after sucking in a short breath. God, she was a mess. Long streams of spilled mascara marred her pale chalky cheeks. Her hair was in complete disarray, and despite her usual goth getup and the fact that it was past sundown, there wasn't a predatory bone left in her. A black duffel bag was at her feet.

"Hey." She tried for a smile, and I kinda wished she wouldn't until her soul got a spark of life back, because it was one of the most heart-wrenching sights I'd ever beheld. "Hum, I know this is sudden, but do you think I could maybe crash here a while? It's…" Her voice cracked more and more as she spoke. She was crying again by the time she managed to push the words out. "It's kind of hell back home right now."

She was in my arms before the whole sentence got out. She hugged me too tightly, but I didn't care. Whatever maternal instincts I had, seeing Erica like this kicked them into overdrive. The pain and numbness withdrew from me. By the time I got Ivy's little sister settled into the kitchen with a mug of hot cocoa, a box of tissues and some makeup pads for her face, I was broken but functional again. It was one of Ivy's last requests that I look after the young vamp, and by God, I wouldn't fail her.

"Thanks." Erica murmured after I settled the mug before her. It had over twice the amount of powder recommended, and I'd prepared it with milk, not water. Screw calories, the kid needed comfort, not a diet. She took a sip before reaching for the pads and beginning to wipe her face.

"Sweetie, don't think for a second that I want to kick you out of here, but wouldn't it be better for you to went to a friend's place instead?" I asked her while she cleaned herself up. She looked up at me with fright in her eyes, and I reassured her once more that I truly wouldn't force her to leave.

"I can't. Everyone's in lockdown. My friends' parents won't even let me talk to them." She answered me dully. "Until Ivy's integrated back into the Camarilla, the whole community's on alert, in case she decides to start a war. She's entitled to a whole lot more than what Rynn's offering her, and she could rally a lot of Piscary's old Camarilla around herself."

I nodded once, a stab of anger shooting through me. Dammit, as if I needed to find new reasons to hate vampire society, now I learned that a kid needing to be close to her friends couldn't because of stupid politics.

"Who're they kidding anyway?" Erica raged, tossing her spent pad in a fit. "Ivy's so deep into post-death stupor she barely remembers her own name. She's about as dangerous as a five year old right now."

"You don't hate me for that?" I asked after a long, tense silence. "You don't think that I should be by her side helping her through it?"

"No. Not really." Erica sighed. "V hated what Dad does for Mom. She thought of making you her Scion a while back, but she didn't want to do the same thing to you. Not even if it killed her. If the stupor kills me, it kills me, she said. It was her choice I guess."

"I'm sorry." I apologised to the young vamp. "I loved Ivy so freaking much, but… I could never do this for her. I'm not as strong as she was."

"I don't think anybody is." Erica's voice tightened in sudden anger. "Don't talk about her as if she's already gone! She can still… she can… she's…" She fumbled with her words for a few seconds before her anguish caught up with her again. She looked so very young without makeup on. "Dammit. Dammit." She sobbed softly against me once I held her into a hug. "She can make it. She can snap out of it and come back. She has to." I didn't answer, just kept stroking her hair and holding her close. I understood what she was going through. Ivy was so solid in life that the mere thought of losing her seemed preposterous. Grieving her kept alternating between being surreal and soul crushing.

I kept holding her so, right until Ivy's computer started beeping like crazy. Puzzled, I shook the machine out of sleep mode, my blood turning to ice in my veins a second after I did. Ivy had obviously programmed it to alert her of breaking news of interest to her, and on the monitor were several reports of Rynn Cormel's demise. Someone had just murdered the Master of Cincinnati, which was scary enough in itself without the news reporting a car bomb had been used. A car bomb very similar to the one Ivy had planted as a contingency in the undead's limo. There was only one possible conclusion to that. Not a nice one.

Shit. Ivy _had_ started a war.

… Wait, you don't look surprised…


	19. Chapter 18

A/N: Can I come out now? Seriously, I'm growing moss on my ass down here!

A/N: More seriously this time. This is a weird chapter (don't worry, I'm done with the weird ones. The next one should be more conventional, in case you're still holding your breath for traditional ravy action). Again in this one, I'm ripping apart something else I didn't like about WWBC's canon, i.e. what a lot of people consider to be the most anticlimactic moment in the whole series.

Also, the reason why there are 2 OCs in there is that I've finished reading "Change" recently, the latest book in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. What does have to do with anything? Well, [****SPOILERS****] it ends with Harry *finaly* asking Murph out on a date, but he gets sho before he can see it through [****SPOILERS****], which pretty much made me bawl like a baby. So I created two characters with chemistry I thought was sort of reminiscent of Murphy and Harry's. Don't worry, they won't be central to other chapters, I just had to vent my frustration over that ending. The wait for the next book is going to be **hell**.

Also, 16K words on that one. Previous record beaten.

A/N: Okay, just one more. 200 comments on this fic. I know I can never say it enough, but here's a down payment anyway; I freaking love you guys. You rock. Thanks a million for bearing with me.

Here goes.

**Chapter 18**

"… The death toll continues to rise during this unprecedented, and very sudden, wave of gang violence sweeping through Cincinnati and its outskirts, with over fifty deaths allegedly tied to organised criminal activities and nearly one hundred persons missing. Beginning with the brutal attack that killed former president of the United States and local businessman, Rynn Cormel, there is still no end in sight to this inexplicable violent crime spree. Councilman Trenton Kalamack addressed the population today, stressing the need to remain calm…"

The newscaster's words were clear, simple, distant even, as if she weren't describing the past three weeks of pure hell that swept through my hometown. Most it was bull. "Over fifty deaths" should be over a hundred, for starters, and that's only those confirmed, the ones they found. As for disappearances, well, investigators couldn't even begin to form an educated guess. In order to be listed as disappearances, someone had to be left to report them, which was not always the case these days.

"Gang violence" was another load of crap, but somehow "war of succession" never made the headlines. Don't ask me why, but I guess editors thought it wouldn't sell. The previous war, the one that should have followed Piscary's death, hadn't made a ripple due to some crafty planning and backroom deals convoluted enough to give Machiavelli a headache. Unfortunately, Cormel had been arrogant in the last months of his life; his takeover had nullified Ivy's claims to succession, and he never bothered to reinstate them, probably figuring he'd rule over the city for a century or two more than he did. People were suffering all over now because of that. I knew Ivy had her pretty little hand in this mess too, but she wasn't the one who had been screwed over. I guess their little meeting after I left hadn't gone too well… or maybe she had played dumb just long enough to stab him in the back. Maybe it was a little of both.

The way Erica had told me, a few days after the city went to hell quicker than a tomato basket in a crematory, much of the old guard from Piscary's days had rallied behind Ivy, with the other factions gathering behind various prominent undead figures and going at it in the hopes of improving their station. Most of them didn't stand a chance. Ivy was going through them like a knife through butter, probably thanks to all that blackmail and assassination prep she'd done for me. The only really tough nut for her to crack was Annabelle Tamwood, actually. I wondered why Ivy's mom took a sudden interest in the city's leadership, if she truly wanted power or she was just doing it to get back at Ivy for biting the bullet before making her a grand-mother…

Now, Ivy and her mom fighting was hardly news, but open street warfare was taking it a little far, even for them, and having her sister and mother almost literally at each other's throat was pretty much hell on my new roommate. Lonely, without her friends, her sister or her parents, Erica had lost much of that outpouring of vital energy I had always liked about her. She was pretty depressed, and it was tough to see her drag herself through her day. The first week had been heart wrenching, since even at school her friends were forced to give her, and each other, the cold shoulder. It had gotten marginally better when the parents of a few of her friends, and boyfriend, had joined Erica's mother's side and the young vamp finally got another shoulder to cry on besides mine. I tried my best to be there for her, but my own grief had a tendency to knock the wind out of me without warning. Half the time I needed to be comforted as much as she did. Jenks helped a lot in this regard, but vampires are touchy-feely creatures, and the kid needed a good solid hug more than words. I managed to get by thanks to the pixy; Erica didn't.

Other than that, I'd mostly recovered from Nathalie's venom, or at least I felt that way when the sun was down, and thanks to Ceri I could tap enough ley line energy to light a flickering light bulb again, without thinking that a guillotine would feel marvellous afterwards, but my heart felt just as raw and empty as it had since I woke up to Nathalie nurturing me back to a semblance of life. The nights, though, were unbearable. The tears always came for me whenever I closed my eyes, and the nightmares… I'll spare you the nightmares. Let's just say the ones I was having put the one I had in Ivy's hospital bed to shame. It was a relief to wake up drenched in sweat and not in Ivy's blood.

Needless to say I was becoming even more of a caffeine addict, what with the way I fought sleep as much as possible. It got me a stormy look from Ceri every time she walked in to talk me through her exercises meant to heal my burned out chi; coffee plus lack of sleep was a big no-no in the pretty elf's book, but she hadn't lost a lover, I had. On a good day, she could bully me into whatever she thought was best for my health, but I hadn't had a good day in the past weeks. I was still adrift. I didn't care much if my magical abilities stayed strained. It got me a reprieve from going into the Ever After with Al, at least. If there has to be a silver lining to everything, this was mine. I didn't have the nerves to deal with the snide bastard yet. The demon wasn't happy about my situation, but tough shit, I was out I was out. I could barely keep up with his lesson when I was at my best, so he told me he'd run a tally of my missed sessions and make a long weekend out of them. Goody for me.

Long story short? Fuck my life.

Bleary eyed, I sat before the TV, a mug of Ceri's nastiest herbal mix sitting on the coffee table in front of me. I was not the slightest bit interested in the news playing even if my eyes were looking straight at it. Erica was my source of news, since she got it from an insider, aka her dad, but there was really nothing on the air to hold my interest anyway, so watching this or anything else was all the same. My days pretty much consisted of running around in circles and pacing the church; I hadn't worked since Ivy's death, partly because I was in no shape to, partly because I didn't see the point to and partly because I was terrified of stepping outside at night. Other than grocery shopping and driving Erica to and back from school, I stayed in my comfortingly secure Sanctuary of Despair. My bank account was turning anorexic, since I couldn't cash in Ivy's check for the life of me, while, ironically enough, the jobs and hiring requests had skyrocketed. There were thirty-eight messages on the answering machine, twenty of them requesting Ivy's the firm's help regarding disappearances. I guess the irony that she was probably responsible for them was lost on the potential clients I had to turn down.

The other calls, though? They were from Ivy herself. What they said, I had no idea… for the most part. The first time she called, I dropped the phone, pulled under by the maelstrom of emotions her soft grey voice had summoned from the pit of my soul. Before the bit of black plastic was even done clattering on the kitchen's linoleum floor, I'd been hyperventilating and scared out of my mind, huddling against the kitchen counter. Not because she was calling me, mind you. Just because she tore every little emotional stitch I'd painstakingly laid on my broken heart open merely by saying my name. My reaction to her voice was what scared the ever-loving crap out of me… Not that I felt completely cavalier about the fact I was on an undead vamp's mind enough that she'd call me every day. The answering machine, unlike my bank account, was about to go on strike, it got so much work. I didn't pick up the phone anymore; it scared me way too much. One of these days, I wouldn't be able to hang up, and that might be the start of a very slippery slope.

_Speak of the devil_... I thought wearily as the damn phone started ringing again. With a sigh and a hand that hadn't been steady in a while, I reached for the receiver, taking a quick glance at the caller ID. The tension in my neck and shoulders loosened a bit when I didn't immediately recognise the number. If it was Ivy calling, she wasn't using her cell.

_That's Erica's number_... I realised after the second ring. The kid was out right now, on a long-postponed and long overdue date with her sweetheart. Much like her big sister had been with Kisten before her, Erica's boyfriend had been paired with her since she was just a baby. Unlike Ivy had, however, the young vamp didn't really have second thoughts about her politically arranged engagement. There wasn't that element of mutual protection Piscary forced upon Kisten and Ivy with his attentions between them; Seth, the boyfriend in question, was really just that, her boyfriend/best friend, not the keeper of her sanity. During the brief time I'd spent in their company, he'd been such a relief to his ailing girlfriend that couldn't help but take as instant liking to him. Just collapsing into his arms seemed to have taken a twenty tons weight off her shoulders. The way he looked at Erica had been heart-warming, like she was the most beautiful thing in the world to him, and he bore marks on his necks that revealed his attention to Erica's slightly precocious needs. He wasn't practicing himself, there were no matching marks on his girlfriend's neck, but it was clear judging by the absolute comfort the two displayed around each other that they were intimate.

_What could she possibly need to call me for?_ She was out blowing off steam for the first time in three weeks; I wouldn't have been surprised if she had slept over. She really shouldn't have needed to give me a ring. Besides, she had an armed chaperone, courtesy of her father; even if she got in trouble, there was help readily available closer than I was. Something was off...

Feeling like I had a sliver of ice rubbing against my spine, I pressed the "talk" button. "Erica?" I spoke. "Is something wrong?"

"Oh, I'm sure she would say something is very wrong, indeed, Rachel." A rough, hostile voice that somehow managed to be both alien and vaguely familiar, answered me from the other side of the line, making my heart stop. "Unfortunately, she can't talk right now, on account that I've got her gagged, so she can't tell you how deep in shit you got her." A shaky, insane chuckle followed that declaration, as if the owner of that awful voice had just made some unbelievable joke.

"Who is this?" I shouted in the receiver. "What did you do to her?"

"Don't recognise me, witch? What a shame. I'm crushed, really. I mean, you were so happy to see me when I killed your boyfriend, but I hear you don't remember that either... Crushed, I tell you." Another fit of cackling followed my stunned silence.

"You killed him. You're the one who killed Kisten." I managed to breathe out. My face felt like it was burning, and I felt like someone had shoved a branding iron into my lower lip. "You tried to bind me."

"Point, Honey. Your lip? That was me. Shame it didn't take, but wasn't used to the vampire gig back then. You'd have made such a nice blood bitch." The voice I didn't recognise mocked. "Oh, and I was the one who showed your girlfriend's bitch a good time, too, in case you were wondering. And now I've got the baby sister and her sex monkey. Really, I didn't remember you and Ivy were such failures. You two are making this way too easy. I'd be disappointed if I wasn't having such a good time wrecking your lives, just like you wrecked mine."

"You... you raped Skimmer too? Son of a bitch, I'll..." _He's the reason Nathalie had to come here! And now he's_ _got Erica... Goddammit, he's got Erica!_ The room spun like mad around me, my body feeling light and distant. Not her. Dammit, not her!

"Oh, yes I did. The blond bitch. My god, was she ever yummy. She was so proud and haughty; it was such a delight to tear her down, make her squeal. That's not what I have in mind for these sweetmeats, though. Oh, we're gonna have such a good time. I just wish I could have done Tamwood in myself, but what can you do? Some you gain, some you lose..."

"I'll kill you. You hear me? I! Will! Kill you!" I screamed in helplessness in the receiver, tears of pure rage making my vision swim.

"I'm sure you will. Come on, little witch, I dare you to try. Better hurry, though, while there's still something left of these two. They look too delicious for me to hold out for long..."

The call disconnected. The phone smashed against the far wall a second later.

"JENKS!" I shouted at the top of my lungs while dashing into my room. The pixy was probably asleep, but I had no time to gently wake him. In a frenzy, I stripped out of my clothes and slipped into my working leathers, pausing only long enough to fill the pixy in. That I was naked above the waist while I did didn't even cross my mind. Modesty was a luxury reserved for situations where two kids' lives weren't at stake. I was almost incoherent, but Jenks got the gist of the situation. There were two kids scared out their minds out there, in the hands of someone who had a beef with Ivy and me. He was Kisten's killer, he was Skimmer's rapist, and trust me when I say he was dead twice, he just didn't know it yet.

"You're going to need more backup." Jenks was glowing red in anger, but he still had more of his reason left than I did. "You gotta call Ivy. She might know how to locate Erica, too."

I froze in place, that very simple fact rooting me where I stood, still shirtless. Dammit, he was right. As much as it terrified me, I needed help, help neither of the official law enforcement agencies could provide. The IS wouldn't help me, the FIB couldn't... Ivy was the only one who could help me rescue her little sister. Besides, if the guy who had Erica was truly the one who killed Kist and hurt Skimmer, she was entitled to a piece of his hide.

"Okay." I breathed out shakily and finished pulling my shirt over my head. With the regular phone lying trashed on the living room floor, I picked up my cell from where it rested atop my dresser and hit Ivy's speed dial number. My heart pounded in both jitters and anger while the call rang once. She picked up after the one ring, and just like that, my heart just stopped. There was nothing else, not a sound, not a breath from me or the world around me, just the sound of that soft voice I loved so much.

"I was wondering if you would ever return my calls. What does a girl have to do to invite her favourite witch to dinner..." Ivy jested light-heartedly as greeting, but she quickly turned serious. "Rachel? What's wrong?" She inquired, probably hearing in my frantic breathing that I was on the verge of panic. "Are you injured? Do you need help?"

"N-no, I'm... I'm okay." I lied. God, I wasn't. Hearing her hurt so much. Between that and the developing crisis, I was getting spread awful thin. "It's Erica. He's got her. The same vamp who killed Kist, and he attacked Skimmer, he..."

"Rachel, deep breaths." Ivy commanded with firm gentleness, her emotional focus unwavering. "Calm down. Who's got Erica? Tell me what happened?"

"Someone just called me from Erica's phone." I explained after taking her advice and inhaling deeply several times. This was only business, I reminded myself, business with really freaking high stakes. She wouldn't lay a finger on me. I had to believe that I could work with Ivy, for Erica's sake. "He claimed he was behind what happened to both Kisten and Skimmer. He even knew about... the bite on my lip. I think he's the real deal. He claimed to have Erica and Seth both."

"I see. I'll need to have words with my father..." Ivy said. Her voice was still calm, but knowing her, it was a calm that would have made Death herself soil her cloak. "Thank you for the heads up, Rachel. You did the right thing calling me. I'll handle this."

"Like hell, Ivy!" I interrupted her before she could hang up, my anger and burning desire for revenge overthrowing my fear of her. "We've both got a score to settle with him. I want to be there."

"..." Only silence answered me. Ivy didn't even need to breathe anymore, so it was almost like she hung up for a second.

"I mean it, Ivy. You're not cutting me off here." I insisted vehemently. "I'm coming with you."

"Rachel, this is not your usual game." Ivy warned me after a deep sigh. "There won't be any grab and drag here. If I let you tag along, you need to tell me you won't hesitate to pull the trigger if you get a chance. He's not getting out alive, not after what he's done."

"'Let me tag al-' fine." I agreed grudgingly, somehow finding amidst the current urgency that my pride could still be wounded, even at the most inopportune times. She was condescending, and I didn't like it.

"I'm serious. It's not a failure if you don't think you have the stomach to do this; just stay out of the way."

"I'm serious too. I'm not going to let Erica go the way of Kisten and Skimmer. Now quit arguing with me, we're wasting time!"

"Be in front of the church in ten. We'll pick you up there." She gave in after a brief pause. "Be ready."

"I will." I replied, trying to get the last word in, but she had already hung up. Dressed up for action, I stepped out of my room, into the kitchen. With quick, practiced motions, I pulled a pain amulet out of my cupboard, invoked it with a quick jab from a finger stick and slipped it around my neck. Maybe I couldn't safely do much magic in my current state, but thanks to this baby, my body didn't know that. Next up, I grabbed my splat gun from its hiding place beneath the island kitchen counter, and placed it into my shoulder bag, only slightly reassured by the piece of cherry red plastic. I was about to go to work with the evil I hoped I knew against the evil I didn't. It would take a lot more than my toy gun to make me brim with confidence. It didn't have the greatest track record against undead vamps. It had been taken from me before I could use it the first time I tagged Piscary, then again the day he died. Nathalie had made a mockery of it. Hell, it had failed me before against the very guy we were up against once more.

_He_... He _dodged it too..._ Just like that, a white-hot flash of spell-suppressed memory surged unwanted before my eye, cutting painfully through the magical haze of numbness evoked by the amulet. It wasn't clear, mostly just a crushing feeling of helplessness I remembered from the night I had pushed Ivy away in fear of being bound to her. This time, however, I felt the gun against my palm clammy with terror, kicking back slightly with each nervous jerk of the trigger, followed by a crushing pain in my back and the taste of blood and another's tongue in my mouth. He had pinned me and bitten me on the lip, hoping to bind me, even though a bite on my neck would have been a more effective method of making me his, by forcing more of his saliva into my system. On the other hand, it was more vicious, violating, personal, though, as if he had a score to settle with me... which he claimed to have.

_Who the hell is he?_ I wondered with a groan, rubbing my forehead in the hopes of staving off the burgeoning headache I felt coming on, even through the magical numbness of the pain amulet. I didn't remember any vamp I had pissed off that much, at least not one still walking around. Piscary might've done something like that, if it hadn't been so far beneath him to kidnap a teenager, and, you know, if his head was still attached to his shoulders. I sincerely hoped it wasn't someone I had refused to date or sleep with a long time ago and completely pushed out of my mind, who just now decided he wanted to make my life hell. I had enough people wanting to kill me because of legitimate reasons without petty grievances becoming capital offences. He might set a dangerous precedent...

"So, how are we doing this?" Jenks asked, flitting back into the church through one of the many pixy holes. He was equipped for action too, with both his sword at his hip and a quiver of arrows at his back, with the matching bow held in his hand. He was dressed in his silk pixy ninja outfit, too, without a scrap of red on him, a clear message that saw him that he was not to be trifled with tonight. "Ivy gonna play ball?"

"She should be here to pick us up any minute." I answered, sparing him a glance before I continued inventorying my spells. Spare pain ones, two of them, for both Erica and Seth, in case they were injured, extra splat balls filled with sleepy time potions, my usual threat and lie detectors, in case we needed to interrogate someone...

"So you're actually going with her?" There was a hint of incredulousness in his tone, and a lot of concern when he continued. "Rache, are you sure you can handle it?"

"Wh- Jenks, you were the one who brought it up! _You_ said I should call her!" I pointed out accusingly, wondering why the hell he would think I might not be tagging along.

"I was kind of hoping you'd balk." He shook his head, giving me a sad, knowing look. "Admit it, if I'd said 'oh, Rache, kindly let Ivy handle it', you'd have told me to buzz off."

"Of course I would've! I've got a dog in this fight, too!" I grunted in annoyance. "I want to tan this bastard's hide just as much as Ivy and you do!"

"Do you want his hide enough to face Ivy?" He asked gently. "If you thought the nightmares were bad, just wait until you see, hear and smell her again, in the flesh."

"I-I..." I stammered, my fists clenching. "I have to, for Erica. Besides, this is just the two of us keeping our word, Jenks. We've got one job left to finish."

"You really believe that?" He asked. "Because judging by the crying you do whenever you go to sleep, I'd say you still feel raw about her. Can you really keep it in mind that she's not the Ivy you love anymore?"

A dry, bitter chuckle escaped me at that. "Just look at what she's done. She always hated violence, now she's gone and picked a fight with the whole city. She's not my Ivy anymore, that woman's gone. It hurts like hell, no question about it, but I know that."

"Famous last words, Rache. Please, just let me and Ivy handle it." The pixy pleaded. "I gave her my word I'd help her nail the guy who raped Skimmer. Now I'm giving you my word we'll get him, and get the kids back. Sit this one out."

"Just stop." I snapped at him, violently bringing my fists down on the counter in frustrated annoyance, making the overhead racks rattle with the impact. "I know what I'm doing."

"Do you? You just agreed to have her pick you up, as in, you won't have your own car and might get stranded with her. You're not thinking straight. On some level, you still trust her, way too much." He pointed out, making me swear inwardly. Crap on toast, he was right; I never had a second thought about trusting Ivy with the transportation, even though getting stranded somewhere with her was a very real threat.

"It's not like I could keep up with her if she drove anywhere in her current state of mind..." I muttered the excuse. "Make yourself useful, would you? Am I forgetting anything?" I asked Jenks, dismissing his warning and turning my attention back to the matters at hand. I had to be ready soon. Jenks sighed, but he let the matter slip. He would be with me, no matter how stupid the things I did got, and don't doubt that I was grateful, but this was no time to second guess me. Most likely it would hurt horribly to see Ivy moving around, I wasn't kidding myself about that, but I could keep it together, as long as we were focused on rescuing Erica and exacting bloody vengeance. I didn't plan on giving Ivy any chance to use my heart against me.

Hovering over the bag I had hastily shoved my gear in, Jenks gave everything a once over. "Hum... Got any memory charms left?" Jenks looked a little uncomfortable making that suggestion, which was understandable, considering he had used one of those to keep me from going after that asshole the day Kisten died. I gave him a puzzled look, and he added "I doubt anything happened tonight the kids will want to remember. Maybe you'd be doing them a favour taking those memories away."

I bit my lip in uncomfortable understanding, my eyes scanning the contents of my spell cupboard until I spotted the charms I kept around in case Newt the crazy demon remembered me and came knocking. Jenks was right that remembering the event of this night was probably not something they would want, but wasn't it one thing to use these in self-defence against an insane demon, and another to use them on a couple of scared vamp kids? It felt wrong to mess with their heads, no matter how noble the intentions.

"Take them just in case?" Jenks suggested. "Better to have them and not need them than the other way around. Charm bracelet?" He asked, and I jiggled the charms on my wrist to show I had it on. There was a little blessed cross on it that could save me in a tight spot, kind of like a magic stun gun. "Holy water?" I rolled my eyes at the gross oversight, and ducked into the island counter where I stashed a few bottles of the stuff. If the little cross was a backup gun, these bitches were freaking hand grenades, but I had to be careful with them; they didn't care if the vamp they burned was on my side or not, and as much as she scared me, I didn't want to toast Ivy. "Hum, I think you should give Ivy her sword back, too."

His last suggestion gave me pause.

"What?" I turned to him with incomprehension in my eyes. "You think she's still worthy of it, after what she's done? The city's a mess because of her, because she put herself above everyone else! Wasn't there some significance to that thing, something about being a badge of honour, as a protector?"

"It's still hers." Jenks answered evasively. I couldn't believe this.

"Don't tell me you fucking approve?" I cried indignantly. "Jenks, she's out there killing people! And for what? Some selfish grab for power?"

"Isn't that obvious?" Jenks asked me. "Think about why she died in the first place, Rache. She died protecting you, and in the end, even that wasn't enough. You're only alive because Nathalie saved you. Ivy, though, she couldn't do a thing to save you. She couldn't save Kisten, either, or Skimmer, or Erica tonight."

"And what? You think that she started this mess to make us safe somehow?"

"Related to Cinci's head vamp'? I'd say that's a pretty safe situation to be in."

"Get off the fence, would you?" I growled in annoyance. "First you warn me I trust her too much, now this? Make up your damn mind, little man."

"Just because I don't think you should take her up on it, doesn't mean I don't respect what she's doing. Nobody has to save the whole damn world, Rache, only their loved ones. The rest can burn, especially if they mean you and yours harm. In that sense, she's entitled to the sword, and even more so if she uses it to save Erica. She's up against one sick puppy; if it helps her, she should get the sword."

"Fine." I agreed without good will for the second time tonight. "If you approve of her senseless violence, then fuck it, she can have the damn sword. Not like I've got a claim to it anyway..."

I stormed out of the kitchen, into the gloomy interior of Ivy's room, my breath held so I wouldn't have to smell her all around me. Erica had claimed it, since the scent of her (living) big sister apparently soothed her instead of ripping out her heart like it did for me, and some of her stuff was strewn about the otherwise impeccable room. With only the light spilling in from the hallway to guide me, I made my way to Ivy's shrine, thankful for the shadows that obscured her collage of happy pictures from view, and grabbed the cold smooth sheath of the sword laying on its little stand. I gingerly avoided touching the grip or cross guards as I made my way back, refusing to feel the living sword's reaction to me. I almost managed to convince myself it wasn't merrily vibrating against the palm of my hand...

The hunk of wood, silk and steel clattered loudly where I tossed it next to my bag, dispersing a few pixy kids that had taken a seat around the island counter to watch the drama of my life unfold. "Anything else? Think I should get her a card to go with the sword? A box of chocolates? A pint of my blood? A sexy negligee and a bow around my neck?" I asked Jenks bitingly, making him shake his head and sigh at me. "Good. Now, let's go. Ivy won't be waiting for us long."

I shouldered my bag and grabbed the sword before heading out, not sparing a glance to see if Jenks was following. Needless to say, I felt betrayed. I knew Jenks lived in a much more primal world than I did, but to say Ivy had good reasons for doing the things she had in the past weeks? No, he was out of line. The blood she was shedding now wasn't justifiable, no matter what her intentions were. I wasn't worth all those lives.

Being angry with him didn't mean I didn't let him take shelter from the cool air outside in my scarf, though. The fabric around my neck was the only thing hiding it, a clear message to any vamp seeing it that they weren't tapping that tonight. Of course, by "any vampire", I mean Ivy. My hope was that she wouldn't be in the mood to make any advances. Tonight should be strictly business, but for once, I felt like being careful, and sending messages to vamps was one thing I was actually good at planning for. Thanks, Kisten...

"That's got to be her." Jenks said from his hiding spot. "Either that, or Erica got free and she did it driving a big ass SUV. Damn, that driver's crazy..."

The vehicle he was talking about rounded the corner at about eighty miles per hour and came to a screeching halt in front of us. It was almost completely black, with darkly tinted windows, and smelled vaguely of burned rubber. I was willing to bet it was a custom, armoured and sun-proofed job, and it had to be consuming like a tripping brimstone junky in an all-you-can-eat buffet. Hey, who ever heard of an eco-minded plotting evil master vampire? At least Ivy was behind the wheel, if the driving style was any indication, and that meant I wouldn't have to sit next to her...

"Get in." Ivy called me out... from the backseat of the car, which was terrifying on two levels; one, I would be sitting within arm's reach of her, while she wasn't focused on driving; two, there was someone else out there who drove the way she and her sister did. Screw the ongoing turf war, THIS made my city a really unsafe place... "Rachel, quit gawking at me and get in. We may not have much time." She demanded urgently.

Shoving my fear back in a corner of my mind, I did as she asked, the car accelerating like crazy before the door had even slammed shut behind me. Call it real bad luck that I wasn't actually seated and stumbled forward straight over the gorgeous undead. A heady mix of familiar vampire incense and leather caressed my nostrils as I gasped in surprise, but my face didn't meet the other side's door dead on; Ivy, reacting with the speed of a sleepy lightning bolt, had caught me, trapping me on her lap. I froze, my breathing stopping right there, as if it might be enough to push Ivy in a direction I desperately didn't want her to go.

"Gee, boss, get a room, will you?" A man's voice, with an Irish brogue so thick it had to be faked, said from somewhere on my right. "You two are making my poor little self mighty uncomfortable here."

"Reed, do you remember what I said I'd do to you if you didn't stop calling me that?" She growled at the unseen voice before glancing down at me and asking in a softer, slightly amused voice; "Comfortable?"

"Not really." I answered in a tiny voice. I wasn't bleeding in her mouth yet, and I suppose that was a victory, even if only a small one; that sure didn't mean I was anywhere near comfortable. "Let go... please?"

"Sure." She let go of me with a shadow of a tight-lipped smile. She even helped me right myself, her eyes sweeping my face quickly and saddening a little when she noticed the bags under my eyes and the chalky quality of my skin. Her hand on my shoulder tightened briefly, as if she wanted to give me some TLC but couldn't. She pulled back without a fuss and curled herself back into her seat, her eyes still on me studying me but her posture otherwise non-threatening. I had no clue what was going on in her head, but I doubted I would like to know.

"What, you mean those weren't supposed to be incentives? They were threats? Oh, boss, I'm real confused here." The thickly accented voice barged in jokingly. It belonged to a blond bear of a man sitting in the front passenger seat of the SUV. His large face was handsome in a rugged kind of way, what seemed like half of it taken up by an enormous grin. His shoulders were incredibly broad, and the hand he extended to me could have swallowed up the whole of mine. "I'm Reed." He introduced himself. "I take it you're Rachel, right?"

"Uh, right." I shook his hand, surprised by the sheer strength of his grip. "You're... a vamp?" I asked him, rather surprised to notice the sharpening of his canine teeth. They were normal-sized, so he was a living one, but I had never, ever seen such a huge vampire... or such an openly friendly one.

"Of course I am, missy!" The huge man replied indignantly. "Damn it, why are people always so surprised to learn that? Is it something I say?"

"More like everything you say..." The driver muttered under her breath, earning herself a stormy, if affectionate, look from Reed.

"Just because you live and breathe to enforce our species' every stereotypes, dear Heidi, doesn't mean we all should. Who says vamps have to brood all day and all night? Or that they can't say over a hundred words daily?"

"They don't need to flap their gums constantly, either."

"I'm sorry, was that... was that syntax you just used? A full sentence? I didn't think you were capable, sweetie. I'm so proud of you!"

"Just ignore him." The driver, Heidi apparently, addressed me, glancing at me in the rear view mirror. "He had way too much sugar after dinner tonight."

"Oh, look, she did it again. Golly, she's talking now. They grow up so fast." Reed mocked the woman beside him. "Besides, you look like you didn't have any in way too long. You're more uptight than a non-practicing in her PMS." Reed countered sullenly. "Once the job's done, I'd be happy to help with that, if you like..." He added in a more sultry manner, making the woman by his side snort in a very un-lady-like fashion. I suppose he would be very happy to give her a little sugar, indeed. Heidi, unlike Reed, I had no trouble identifying as a vampire. She was fashionably pale and leanly muscled, about my height, with hair a deep, almost decadent shade of brown. Her body was athletic rather than curvy, but her finely chiselled features made it hard to notice her somewhat lacking shapes (and hey, could I cast that particular stone? No, sir, I could not...). Her eyes were a pale steely blue and were practically glittering, which made me suspect she wasn't nearly as opposed to Reed's advances as she tried to sound, and between them and her creamy complexion, short dark hair and sensuous mouth, she looked good enough to eat.

"You're a pig. In your dreams." She retorted, but she was straining not to smile anyway.

"Nah, I'm not a pig in my dreams, I'm in be-" Ivy cleared her throat noisily. "Hum, right, shutting up now, boss."

"Kids..." Ivy sighed and shook her head, looking weary. "They mean well, but they can be so tiring after a few weeks..."

"Your fake accent is annoying as hell..." Heidi muttered, obviously trying to get the last word in.

"It's not fake, missy. It's the heritage of my ancestors." Reed muttered back.

"You've never even been to Ireland, hell, your parents never have..."

"'Course not. Not much of it left after the Turn. That's why I need to keep it alive any way I can."

"There's almost nothing left of China, but you don't hear Ivy fake a Chinese accent to honour her ancestors, do you?"

"It's not that you two aren't annoying the crap out of me, which, by the way, you are." Ivy butted in. "It's just that I would appreciate it if you focused on the job at hand. Feel free to sputter nonsense to your heart's content _after_ Erica comes home safe."

"Sorry, boss. Just pre-mission smack-talk, nothing to worry about. We're focused." Reed guaranteed her in a very different voice, an edge of steel creeping into it. A righteous fire burned behind his hazel eyes, an angry one. "We'll get the kids back, I promise."

I followed the whole exchange without saying a word, stunned by the silliness I was witnessing. Either they were supremely confident, and I was missing the reason why, or they had an ace up their sleeve.

"So you found her?" I asked while untying my scarf and letting out a very peeved pixy glowing an angry red. I'd forgotten about him, and I realised that my fall had tightened the band of fabric just enough to trap him there. He came out swearing in an angry shower of sparkles.

"Yeah, did you, or did I just get crushed for no good fairy fart reason?" Jenks rambled while he gave his wings a quick once-over. "Tinks' titties, Rache, ever heard of washing your clothes when you come back from the Ever After? That scarf stinks of burnt amber!" He berated me, my stuttered defence that I did wash it and his damn nose was just too sensitive blowing right over his head.

Ivy, her attention having turned to the view outside the window, pivoted her head a fraction and gave Jenks and me a quick glance from the corner of her eyes. She looked... good. Better than good, considering the circumstances. Her hair had grown out more than it should have in three weeks, but it was still styled in mostly the same fashion, its gold-tipped spikes and layers now framing her face and brushing her shoulders. Big surprise, she was dressed in black leather, with thigh-high boots and a long leather coat featuring a dramatically flared collar and sleeves matching the style of her footwear. Her hands were sheathed in fine, soft gloves of the same material. She was showing a little more cleavage than usual, but it was still well within the tasteful end of the spectrum. Overall, she looked sexy and dangerously predatory; it had been a long time, however, since I felt it was meant for me.

"Erica's phone has a built-in GPS locator chip, just in case. My people tracked it to the outskirts of the city. The abandoned parts." Ivy answered as if she wanted me to make a connection.

"You mean where... Kist was killed?" I realised, making Ivy nod.

"Just a mile or two away, actually." Ivy answered approvingly. "Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I doubt it. He wanted you to be off your game by reminding you of Kisten."

"Huh, guys, I don't want to rain on your parade, but didn't this guy elude us for like six months?" Jenks joined in. "As in, he managed to elude _me_, for six months? You really think it's gonna be that easy? Seems like a rookie mistake to hang on to Erica's phone, if you ask me."

"He's right." I agreed. "It's got to be a trap. We don't even know if he'll be there, let alone Seth and Erica. We only know where the cell is."

"Which is why I confirmed the info with other sources. Trust me, we're going exactly where Erica is." Ivy replied just a little smugly, rejoicing a bit that she had out-planned us, like she always did, and my eyes scrunched shut for a fraction of a second. God, she looked so much like the Ivy I knew... _No, can't think like that! Bad, BAD Rachel!_ I berated myself mentally. That line of thought was a slippery slope if I ever saw one, and it would end with me mentally enslaved to Ivy's will.

"What other sources?" Jenks asked with piqued curiosity. "Do you know who he is?"

"Some scumbag loner is what he is." Reed muttered from the front with scorn and steely hatred. "Wouldn't be surprised if he was an undead ghoul..."

"That's the conclusion I've drawn too." Ivy agreed. "He has to be a loner, else I would have found him by now. It could have been a one-time deal Piscary made with a vamp from some other city, but I doubt he would have stuck around this long if he had a home elsewhere. He's from outside the community, here or anywhere else."

"You still haven't told us what your "other source" was..." I reminded her, a cool doubt spreading in my gut. _Please, don't let it be magic..._ I wished silently; Ivy was already terrifying enough without spells at her command. I'd kick myself to death for helping her get over her phobia to use charms if she had them now...

"I got my hands on a locator charm tailored to find her." Ivy answered, making me swear inwardly. "Sorry, I would have asked you to make it, but we were pressed for time." She apologised fondly, as if jealousy that she had gone to someone else for her new magical needs was what really bothered me.

"Who made it?" I asked, mentally summoning the list of names I knew comprised the most notorious members of Cinci's dark magic circles. This day was not going well enough for me to hope she'd gone to someone nice and legit for a barely legal grey charm. Ivy, though, didn't give me a straight answer...

"A new friend I made." She toyed with me mischievously, a private smile on her lips. She knew something I didn't, knew it irritated me, and it amused her.

"Care to be a little vaguer?" I shot sarcastically. "I just feel much too informed right now."

"I've been trying to explain myself to you for the past three weeks, or don't you remember YOU haven't been picking up?" She replied sullenly before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, as if I had truly hurt her feelings and she was trying to push them down. "I'll tell you everything later, if you'll let me." She offered, looking me earnestly in the eyes, making me deeply uncomfortable; I wasn't entirely sure whether the sudden idea I got that her explanation might take the form of pillow talk stemmed from her, or me... Probably her; she was the one wearing leather pants that looked like they had been spray-painted on, after all.

_Eyes front, you moron!_ I ordered my stupid, stupider, _stupidest_ libido to stand down. This wasn't the time or the place, or even the right person to lust after. Erica was in trouble, plus this was the closest I'd gotten yet to settling the score with her kidnapper.

"Okay, so we know where she is. Do we know anything else?" Jenks asked, businesslike. "Is she okay? Is Seth?"

I could answer that one. "Locator charms are targeted, and they only work if the one they target is alive. We at least know Erica is still breathing, but beyond that... Not much else, really."

"I hate this, guys." Jenks said. "He's got to be ready for us. This is just too easy otherwise." He sounded worried, but Ivy's answering chuckle, however, was confidence given sound.

"Trust me, Jenks. No one can be ready for me. The best he can do is think he's ready and be painfully proven wrong." She assured him with a dangerous smile, her pupils dilating with slow, careful control, until there was no brown left in her eyes. Cool air seemed to dance around me, entwined about all of us. It was the most delicate aura I'd ever felt Ivy pull, more akin to the displays of power Nathalie had demonstrated during her brief stay...

_That's it. That's got to be it._

"What did Nathalie do to you?" I asked with dread, Ivy's smile turning approving all the confirmation I needed. The ancient undead had done something to her. "You're too powerful, too in control, you're not acting like you're supposed too..."

"I'll tell you everything." She repeated once more. I barely managed not to flinch when she briefly took my hand and leaned closer to me, not because it didn't feel pleasant to have her close, but because it did. Her hand was so soft and warm, it was impossible to fathom she was dead... My mind could scream terrifying facts about her at me all night long, the fact remained that my body couldn't figure out that Ivy was now a danger to me. She was just warm and soft and kissable and everything else it associated with a very primal 'good'. I had to try and keep her at arm's length. "Once we get Erica out safe, I promise I will."

"I think we're almost there." Heidi cut in from the front. The neighbourhood we were in was beyond rough or run down by then. When the Turn hit and humans started dying by the troves, a broad stretch on the outer limits of Cinci, beyond what would become the Hollows, was abandoned, the residents moving to the inner city and the Inderlander pretty much taking possession of what became upper/upper-middle class suburbs. This part, however was dark as a demon's soul, as in, the city didn't bother putting up power around here. Not a streetlight was lit, nor were any windows in any house. The only thing keeping the suffocating blackness away was the beams from the SUV's flood lights. We weren't missing much anyway. The only thing they revealed was the desiccated corpse left over from the Turn; streets littered with garbage and debris, rundown houses with boarded up windows, graffiti announcing the end of the world, even one or two hazmat tents the government hadn't bothered reclaiming... you know, your typical scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie. Cue in the charging horde of primal humans with crude but cruelly effective weapons...

Okay, so there was none of that last part, but the only ones living in places such as this were the dregs of society; low blood vamps on the run from their masters, undead vamps with a fondness for off-season game, black witches, feral weres, transients, murderers, rapists... The list of reasons why you didn't want to stick around here for long went on and on.

"There." Reed pointed out the windshield at the one bright spot in the ass-end of nowhere. One house, that was once a very pretty house, was lit on the whole block, probably running off a generator somewhere. Heidi bobbed her head slowly in acknowledgement, cutting the engine and immobilising the big vehicle a few dozen yards away from the house. "Right, let's get our toys." He said before exiting the car, followed by Heidi as soon as she popped the trunk open.

"Speaking of toys..." Ivy said, her hand drifting closer to me though her attention was elsewhere, more precisely on the sword sitting between us. "Do you really think you can rock the swordsman look, or is this for me?"

"Just take it, would you?" I snapped, still sore over the fact Jenks wanted her to have it. "I'd fall on that thing if I tried to use it and you know it."

"I suppose you would." The vampire joked before she nodded gratefully to me "Thank you." She drew an inch of the blade from the scabbard, looking fascinated by the dark aura wrapped around the blade. It looked fierce and roving, like a flow of dark lava, and bloated out the fine engraving and the iridescent sheen of the pixy sword. The sight just sickened me.

"Don't thank me. Jenks insisted I give it to you. I personally don't think you're entitled to it any longer."

"So touchy... and so quick to judge." She sighed and shook her head before giving me a tender look. Before I could blink, her smooth face filled my vision. I jerked away in terror, but not before she could brush her lips lightly against my cheek. "We'll really need to have that talk." She gave me a quick wink and a small smile that kept her fangs hidden, then exited the car with the pixy sword in hand, leaving me behind badly hyperventilating and desperately trying to get my pulse to stop sounding like the hooves of a race horse.

"Tink's a Disney whore, Rache, are you okay?" Jenks asked frantically, hovering before my nose. He had his sword in hand, but Ivy had been so fast even he didn't have time to react.

"Just peachy..." I muttered, my trembling fingers stroking the spot where Ivy had kissed me without any conscious input on my part. Crap on toast, it was tingling. "Peachy damn keen. Still think she deserves that sword?" I asked him harshly without taking the time to hear his reply. I felt a little stupid snapping at him like that, as if Ivy somehow deserved a stake in the heart more now that she had given me a little peck on the cheek, but I had to move, to do something, anything to distract myself from the fresh memory of Ivy's warm and perfect lips on my skin.

I joined up with the vamps in the pool of light behind the car. The two living ones were gathered around a crate loaded up into the back compartment of the SUV and were busy pulling out and checking over their "toys", as Reed had put it, from its confines. Their clothing, I noticed now that I took a good look at them, wasn't quite usual. They were both dressed in black tactical garb that looked like the standard issue of I.S. arcane division's special intervention units, the vastly more lethal flipside of the FIB's SWAT teams.

"Who the heck are you guys?" I asked with widening eyes as they pulled several nasty-looking weapons from the crate.

"During the work day, I'm I.S. SIU sergeant Reed Connor." Reed answered with a formal voice but a friendly smile, one that didn't stop me from upping my threat evaluation of him. "And she's constable Heidi Andrews, also of SIU. Pleasure."

"Purple fairy farts, for real?" Jenks exclaimed as he landed on my shoulder, using my body heat to keep himself warm. "Where did Ivy find you two?"

"Heh, she didn't, we came to her." Reed chuckled. "You know, power struggles are like elections; if you don't pick a side and do your part, you don't get to complain about who's in charge once the dust settles."

"But... doesn't it bother you that she started this whole mess?" I asked a little reprehensively. Reed seemed like a nice guy, not the kind who would dismiss murder as something insignificant.

"Boss was next in line for the throne after Piscary." The big vamp shrugged and grabbed a compact submachine gun, checking it over with keenly expert eyes. "If Cormel hadn't tried to screw her over big time in negotiations, maybe she wouldn't have killed him. Besides, it's not often a Master vamp still has living family she cares about. She wants to make this city safe for Erica. It ought to make Cinci a pretty nice place for the rest of my first life." He slapped a clip of ammunition into his gun, and worked the loading lever, chambering a round with a soft clack. "Ivy's a nice gal, especially for an undead. Really, why wouldn't I help her?"

Put like that, it sounded almost reasonable to pick Ivy's side. Still, he wasn't Ivy's girlfriend while she was alive, and her intentions towards him were more or less known. He had little reason to displease her, and even less to fear her. That wasn't the case for me.

"I hate to barge in, but we need to get them ready too." Heidi interrupted us after she finished loading a huge, nasty-looking shotgun. "This one is for you." She said, handing me her sidearm. At a glance, it looked like your average automatic pistol. Taking it gingerly, and seeing it next to her huge gun, I felt like I was starring in a scene from a certain 90s alien movie...

"Huh, thanks, but I'm good. I've got my own right here." I said, pulling the familiar weight of my splat gun out of my shoulder bag. It was even tinier than the automatic, but at least, I was used to it. I didn't really like guns, at least not real ones. My repurposed toy was much more my speed.

"I'd take it if I were you." Reed whisper amusedly and stepped a little closer to me. "Boss told us to knock you out and lock you in the car if you don't. You gotta go in ready to kill if necessary, or you don't go in at all."

"I will." I replied with a bit of a panicky whine. "Kill, I mean. If necessary. With magic."

"You and she don't have the same definition of the word." Reed shrugged apologetically. "You want a left black eye or a right black eye?" He asked almost kindly. I stammered something incomprehensible but completely outraged, and picked the gun up before he could finish cracking his knuckles.

"This is blackmail. Dirty evil blackmail. I hope you're proud of yourselves." I complained with my new weapon in hand. The gun felt heavier than what I was used to, and there was a charge about it, a magical one. I knew SIU got its toys from the arcane division, so it was entirely possible the gun fired something far nastier than its innocuous appearance suggested.

"Bah, it's not like I would have really hit you." Reed shrugged, and laughed at my incredulous look. "I'm not kidding, missy. I was just the distraction while Heidi sneaked up on you and choked you into unconsciousness. Boss would stake me twice if I punched her girl's lights out."

"That's massively comforting..." I drawled after taking a look behind me and noticing that the expectation of throttling me had been enough to get Heidi's eyes to dilate a bit. These two were way more casual towards the application of violence than any other vamp I'd met... "Thanks for backing me up back there, Jenks." I muttered sarcastically at the pixy who hadn't lifted a finger to stop them when the two vamps were closing on me.

"Hey, I don't think you should be here." He protested. "If they don't want you with them in there, they're welcome to knock you out and tuck you away nicely in the car. Are you sure you two don't have your guns mixed up?" He asked Heidi, who had begun loading shells into that big-ass shotgun of hers. It wasn't quite disproportionate in her hands, but Reed had chosen a much smaller, more compact gun that I would have expected the female vampire to favour.

"You make a joke about dick sizes, Reed, and I swear I will cold cock you." Heidi grunted before the other vamp could do more than grin.

"What? I didn't say anything." He responded, trying his hardest to look completely innocent. "You see how I'm getting labelled here? Listening to her, you'd think I spend my time making dirty jokes and flirting with anything with ovaries."

"You do spend your time flirting with anything with ovaries." Heidi muttered and grumpily pumped her gun, her lowered eyes showing a hint of sadness this time. She obviously had a soft spot for him, though it seemed Reed had a promiscuous streak, one that caused her some degree of pain. My guess was she didn't see how much he liked her back, and he wasn't used to liking a woman that much and didn't know how to approach her... Playing matchmaker, though, was not on the menu for the moment. Maybe later I could give one or both a nudge in the right direction, but not now.

"Have you ever used one of these?" Heidi changed the subject while I palmed the gun and turned it around in my hands, trying to get a feel for it. I had, but it had been quite a while...

"I did my range time back when I started in the I.S., but they never gave me a carrying permit. My old boss pretty much assured me I'd get mine over his twice dead body..." I still thought guns were cool back then, but that was before I found myself on the wrong side of one. Toting a gun had strangely lost its romantic glamour after that first time a bullet whizzed past my head. With the crap assignments I got from them during my glorious career, a gun would have been overkill anyway. I never really missed it.

"I take it you know which end to point towards your mark, then. This one's got a fifteen rounds magazine, plus one in the chamber. It's designed to be used by a vamp against a vamp, so it's got huge muzzle velocity and lots of powder behind each round. It will kick you half as hard as the guy on the other side if you're not careful. Even if it's not imposing, treat it like a large calibre handgun. Mind your stance, and don't try to fire it one-handed, or you won't be able to hit anything. That also means the recoil spring is pretty hard, so you might not be able to cock it if you need to reload." It took a little doing, but as it turned out, I was strong enough to pull the slide, which got me an approving nod from Heidi. A round was ejected from the weapon, caught in midair by the other woman and brought up to my eyes. The bullet had a pointed tip and was made from some dull, grey metal shot through with blue sparks. "The bullets are meant to take out undead vamps only. Shoot them at anything else, they'll just blow a tiny hole and do minimal damage." Heidi continued reciting her explanations. "They're sanctified, though, so against undead flesh, they'll light up like incendiary rounds. On contact, they'll slag due to the heat and mushroom, so you get great and selective stopping power."

"Nasty buggers. It's not written on the box, but a dead vamp with one of these in his guts is pretty much going to suffer through hell. Burns from the inside out." Reed piped in. "Smells terrible afterwards, but they work real well."

"I can imagine..." I agreed but didn't approve, feeling a little aghast towards the inhumane nature of the gun in my hands. There was no doubt it was effective, but it was a little extreme. I wanted to kill Kisten's murderer, not torture him to death.

"What about me?" Jenks interjected expectantly, not even a little put off by the description of the bullets' effects. Considering his favourite hobby consisted of fighting fairies in brutal territorial disputes, the contrary would have surprised me. "You said the two of us. Got any sweet toys for me?"

"Yes." Heidi replied. Apparently, when she wasn't explaining the ins and outs of her favourite piece of equipment, or flirting with Reed, she really wasn't the most loquacious woman... Out of the trunk, she pulled out a much smaller reinforced box.

"I was worried about going in there without any intel, but with a pixy here, we can easily remedy that." Reed said confidently. "People think SIU only crushes the FIB's SWAT in performance so badly because we're all vamps, when in truth, it's because we're vamps, we've got better toys and we've got pixies and fairies doing recon. In no particular order, of course." The blond vamp nodded respectfully to Jenks, who was still standing on my shoulder and, up to this point, had been staring at Ivy's barely visible silhouette outside the halo of light the SUV projected.

"This is our standard recon harness." Heidi explained, bringing the box to my shoulder so Jenks could see inside. The interior was filled with dark grey shock padding moulded to fit three sets of tiny little harnesses. Each consisted of four straps tied to a (relatively) large orb-like object maybe three quarters of an inch in diameter. "It can transmit both sound and images, and there is an environmental protection spell woven into it. It will protect against abrupt changes in air pressure, cold and any harmful contaminants. Anything from run of the mill smoke to airborne pathogens, this will keep them away."

"Holy crap..." Jenks whistled after taking off my shoulder and landing on the box. Carefully, he touched one of the harnesses, and instantly, the shivering in his dragonfly wings died down. "Feels like a summer afternoon. This is great stuff! Think you can make me one, Rache?" He asked me, turning to face me with a big beaming smile on his face. I knew winter was a pain for him and his kids, and I made a mental note to try and find the recipe for those particular charms. He could probably handle the crafting of the harness itself if I could find the spells required.

"You look pretty fit, so I don't think you'll have trouble flying with it strapped to you." Heidi said while Jenks put the harness on. "We'll be able to see what you do thanks to the computer we've got in the back. It'll map what you're seeing so you don't need to relate everything. If you spot a trap, tell us and we'll deal with it when we go in. Just focus on stealth, and try to locate the kids."

"Don't worry about it. Stealth is the... third thing pixies do best." Jenks boasted, taking off experimentally to see how he could handle his new piece of equipment. Meanwhile, Heidi's eyebrows shot up in puzzlement over the two things pixies might do better than sneaking, until Reed breathed in her ear just what it was they did best. It sounded vaguely like "babies", but whatever he told her, it made the placid vamp blush and her elbow shoot backwards into the huge vamp's sternum, whose grunt of pain quickly turned into a strangled guffaw.

"Watch your back, Rache. See ya on the other side." Jenks took off without waiting around any further, leaving me alone with the three vamps. Next door to what had to be a fucking trap. Possibly with a psycho murdering undead nearby. In the dark. Scratch that, in the pitch fucking dark. In the very worst part of town. Did I mention I was alone? Yeah... Mommy.

"Okay, it's transmitting." Heidi, still managing to look a little flustered even though the game was now on, said from before a bulky laptop resting in the open back compartment. "Damn, he's fast..." She whispered admiringly. "Why the heck wasn't he on the recruiting rooster back when he was still with us?"

"Dunno. Ask the stiffs downstairs the next time you're in the tower. They couldn't recognise talent if it humped them in the face..."

"Are you going to cry about those three times you failed selections again?"

"Those were totally unf-" He began whining, but a quick, sharply barked order from Ivy promptly shut him up.

"Am I asking for too much? I'm not asking for too much, am I? Fo-cus!" The undead materialised between the two of them, her eyes black in anticipation and exasperation both. It was all the encouragements the two living vamps needed to shut up and slip into their professional mode, each of them riveting their eyes on the screen and making one tactical observation after another. Their apparent improvements in attitude didn't stop Ivy from breathing down their necks and looming over them in a most threatening manner. I think she might have even been pulling an aura on them, if the sudden cold shift in temperature was any indication...

"There's Seth." Heidi pointed out at the screen, a hint of horror showing up on her face. "Shit, he really worked him over."

"My god... is he even alive?" I breathed out, my throat suddenly parched. The image, though well defined, was black and white, but one thing was still very clear; blood was everywhere. The kid had lost a lot, and he was either completely unconscious or completely dead.

"Son of a fairy whore!" Jenks shouted, his mic spitting a blast of feedback on our end. The image blurred violently as he hastily made his way towards the young, injured vamp, but he came to a sudden, swear-filled halt before he even made it halfway. "Oh, you have got to be SHITTING me! This shit AGAIN?"

"Jenks? Jenks?" I shouted back, leaning closer to the computer in a momentary lapse in memory. The mic was one-way only...

"He can't hear you." Heidi gently pushed me away, far more composed than I was. "Look." She gestured to the screen, where the camera was still transmitting the images composing Jenks' point of view. Thin, almost invisible strands criss-crossed the camera's field of vision. "I think I know what happened."

"Sticky silk. Fucking sticky silk." I swore, gripping a handful of my hair in frustration. How often could this fucking thing ruin a perfectly good breaking and entering?

"You morons, quit watching and get the fuck in here! He needs help! Yesterday, you stupid lunkers!" Jenks shouted at the top of his lungs, his wild struggling making the picture we got sway wildly.

"He's right, we have to go." Reed declared, thumbing the safety off his weapon before slinging a duffle bag over his shoulder. I barely recognised him again, his focus was suddenly so intense. "We'll do a room by room sweep, split up two and two. Ivy, follow Heidi and watch her back. Boss, I'm respectfully asking you to shut the hell up and follow our lead." He forcefully cut Ivy off before she could finish opening her mouth to protest or make any suggestion. "You can tan my hide later for being insolent, but right now, locate Erica and get her out. Rachel, you're with me, we're going after Seth. Move out."

Ivy and I fell into step with the two coordinated, deathly silent vamps. In the blink of an eye, we were stacked up on either side of the front door, with Reed on one knee lovingly picking the lock. Before I knew it, he had it opened, and Heidi and Ivy slipped in like a pair of ghosts, and Reed and I followed. A huge, open foyer greeted us on the other side, with a ruined staircase straight out of a different time spreading before us. Having memorised the floor plan, Reed led us straight to the kitchen, his weapon barely more than a blur in his hands as he checked every possible attack angle one after the other. So far, there was no trace of the vampire responsible for the atrocity waiting for us when we found the young vamp...

"Holy mother of god..." I whispered when I entered. Seth was there all right, but he was... butchered. What was left of him was restrained into an armchair by nails the length of my hands, driven straight through his forearms. Not an inch of his fair skin was clear of blood. Cuts bone-deep were visible on his arms and naked torso, some of his entrails peeking through them. His fingers were all twisted at impossible, broken angles, and not a single one of them still had a fingernail. His throat looked like the aftermath of a bear attack. Bite marks more savage than any I had ever seen had turned it into so much hamburger...

Needless to say bile rose pretty damn quickly in my throat at that sight, but by some small miracle, I didn't barf up the meagre contents of my stomach. I brought my gun to bear and helped Reed sweep the surroundings, so we could help the young vamp safely. There was no one around, not even a trace of the perpetrator, but my hands were shaking so badly I would have missed one way or the other if I had to shoot him.

"Clear." Reed said, probably more out of habit than anything else, and let go of his gun to rush to the young vamp's aid. The SMG swayed on its strap at his side for a fraction of a second before he dropped it along with the duffle bag.

"Don't you dare, witch!" Jenks snapped at me when I turned to help him. "Leave me and help the kid, for Tink's sake!"

He needn't have bothered screaming at me...

Reed's fingers expertly searched Seth's neck for a pulse, but it didn't take long for his face to fall and his jaw to clench in anger and anguish. "God-fucking-dammit..." He muttered through his gritted teeth. "He's gone. Fucking degenerate killed him."

Jenks stilled, his wings going completely colourless in numbing shock. I could have cut the silence that followed with a knife.

"He's... gone?" Shit. I was too late. Too late to stop this bastard. Again.

"He's been dead for at least an hour." Reed observed. "He was probably dead by the time you got the call. There's nothing you could have done."

"Is he going to... rise?" I asked, feeling like an elephant in a china shop around the anguished vampire.

"No." Reed answered curtly. "He's not regenerating. I guess he was too fucking young for that. For Christ sake, he hadn't even awakened yet. He's really gone." The big man shook his head a few times, obviously trying to clear it, but it just wasn't enough. With a primal, guttural sound emerging from his throat, he punched the floor with all of his considerable might, over and over again, the linoleum quickly giving way until he vented enough of his frustration and anger to give himself a measure of composure. With distant eyes, he took a look around the room, noticing the other chair for the first time. His nostrils flared, and his entire body shuddered in renewed outrage. "Erica was there." He said in a hollow voice. "He made her watch while he tortured Seth. Her fear is all over that chair. Her anguish. Goddammit."

I heard what he said. I understood it. And all of a sudden, the rounds loaded into the weapon I held in clammy hands seemed far too humane for the waste of space who did this.

Reed brought one battered hand to his earpiece and spoke very quietly. "Heidi, we've found Seth. We were too late. He's dead. Where are you? Basement? Have you found Erica? ...What trouble? Oh, shit." Whatever that trouble Heidi spoke of was, it was enough that his eyes widened in fear and surprise. Jerkily, he pushed off one of his knee and got to his feet. "We're clearing out now. Get them both out, ASAP."

"What's going on? Is Erica okay?" I asked, feeling my pulse kick-starting at the scared look on the vampire's face.

"You were right, this is a trap. This place is wired with enough explosives to place us in orbit. Cut your friend free, now." He commanded, handing me a long, wicked combat knife from his breast sheath. "I'll get Seth's body."

Cutting Jenks free with that big knife was pretty much akin to cutting overcooked noodles with a chainsaw, but since we were standing on "enough explosives to put us in orbit", I didn't take the time to feel silly about it. Even without the silk trapping him in midair, the pixy's wings were still tangled up in it, making him unable to fly, so I held my hand out under him to catch him. The usually petulant pixy was terribly quiet, his eyes filled with shameless tears still glued to Seth's corpse. He felt so light and fragile, heartbroken in my hand like that. "I want to kill him." He whispered with murderous simplicity, his rage turning his wings black. He no longer looked like a gangsta Peter Pan, more like a beautiful four inches tall angel of death. "One little bit at a time. I want to cut him up in a million tiny pieces and feed him to the crows."

"We will, Jenks." It was my turn to promise him, and I did so shakily. "We've got to get out. Now." There was a sickening wet sound behind us, Reed having ripped the spikes impaling Seth's arms from his flesh and lugged the young vampire's body over his shoulder. We set out for the front door, crossing path with Heidi on the way out. Ivy and Erica were conspicuously absent.

"Heidi, where the fuck is Ivy? Where's the girl?" Reed shouted at the woman, who somehow managed to look startled, as if Reed had just roused her from a deep slumber. She violently shook her head several times, anger and panic drowning out her sleepy look.

"She... Fuck, Reed, she bespelled me." She panted, holding her forehead. "Christ, this hurts... She ordered me to get out."

"Where is she?" I demanded, an overwhelming wave of fear coming over me out of seemingly nowhere. All of a sudden, I was too afraid for Ivy's fate to be afraid of the implications of that fear.

"Still downstairs." Heidi groaned in pain, her will still caught in the vice grip of Ivy's. "Erica's... Erica's trapped. She's trying to get her... get her out."

"Rachel, no!" Reed caught me before I even realised I was heading there. His voice sounded so distant, so unreal through the haze of adrenaline, that he felt more like a dream than the cold, cruel reality. "We have to get out! Come on!"

"No! We can't leave her!" I shouted, barely aware of it. "Let me go, you bastard!"

I tried to fight him. Hell, I tried to fight them, Heidi apparently finding that attempting to drag my hysterical witch ass out of a house about to blow up loosened the pain of fighting Ivy's compulsion, but I might as well have tried to stop the sun from rising. The two vamps simply overpowered me and wrenched me through the front door, kicking and screaming.

We barely made out a safe distance before being knocked flat on our collective asses by the fist of an angry god. A sound more deafening than any I ever heard nearly blew out my eardrums, the shockwave from the explosion picking me up and discarding me like a rag doll a child would have grown tired of. I landed several feet away, my arms covering my head protectively against the shower of debris from the now burning house. A thud against my back blew the breath out of me, but painful as it was, thanks to the tough leather of my jacket, I would probably pull through with little more than an enormous bruise between my shoulder blades. On either side of me were the two still living vamps, groaning and shifting slowly in pain, stunned into a stupor thanks to their heightened hearing. Sharper senses only sound like the greatest idea in the world until you get massive sensory overload, but they looked okay otherwise.

The pixy lying motionless on the ground before, however, didn't.

"Jenks!" I scrambled on all fours to reach him, my back screaming in pain I shoved very far away from the forefront of my thoughts. With all the care in the world, I picked up his tiny body from the cold ground and brought it to my face. "No, no, no, no, no, no. You can't... you can't be... You son of a bitch, you can't leave me!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, which just came out as a raspy, pained filled sound thanks to the choking smoke now filling the air.

"Rache?" Jenks mumbled feebly, making me gasp in surprise and relief. "What happened? Son of a disease-ridden fairy whore, I feel like I've spent a week on an airliner..." He groaned, trying to sit up. "Oh, great, I survive the blast, now Mattie's gonna kill me." He swore while checking his wings over again. His right one was bent cleanly in two. "Look at that. Snapped right across the main vein. Gonna have to grow the whole thing back. How much you wanna bet she won't even let me have some honey while she amputates..."

I took a calming breath; he was obviously in shock, but he wasn't singing, nor reciting poetry. If the worst he had to worry about was the ire of his wife, then it was good enough for me.

"Ivy and Erica make it out?" Jenks managed to piece enough of his mind together to realise a house had just blown up around Ivy's ears.

"I don't know." I answered him, my heart thumping painfully in my chest. "Heidi said something about Erica being trapped... I don't know, Jenks. I don't think so."

"She has to be. I can smell her." Jenks murmured ruefully. "She's been indulging lately."

"That's her scent on me, Jenks." I reminded him gently. "I'm still covered in it."

"No, no, it's fresh I tell you. Let me tell you, she positively stinks." He argued groggily, trying his hardest to get to his feet so he could point the direction he thought Ivy's scent came from. "I bet she feeds every day these days. Oooops, that's right, she's undead now. She has to, or she goes not right in the head. Not sure how _we're_ supposed to tell the difference, though..." He giggled and promptly fell on his ass, a vague 'ow' escaping him several seconds later. "I tell you, it's the harness. It should smell like the inside of a chimney, but I can smell you and Ivy and Erica and the two yahoos from SIU just fine. I'm sure. She's over there." He pointed a very general directing behind him, but I honestly didn't need GPS coordinates to find what he was going on about. There was a broad swath cleared of slushy snow maybe thirty yards away; at its end, lit up by the crimson flames of the burning house, was a prone silhouette maybe six feet long.

I spared a glance for Reed, who got to his knees and was busy checking his partner over with naked concern on his face, then made my stumbling way towards the dim shape. Indeed, it was Ivy, still smouldering from her close call and cradling a freed Erica to her chest. Her eyes were feral as they trained on me; she was in pain, and her protective instincts had probably kicked in the instant she was reunited with her endangered baby sister. Her body was wrapped protectively around Erica's, still braced tight against an impact that had to be brutal enough to grind a grown man to a pulp. She hissed menacingly at me as I drew close, but eventually recognition caught up with her primal brain, and she relaxed a fraction. With a grunt of pain, she righted herself and began checking Erica over.

The teenage vampire bore evidence of torture, although it was clear from what we had found in the burning house's kitchen the brunt of it had been psychological, derived from forcing her to watch Seth get tortured himself. She was conscious, but it was clear she wasn't really, either. Pain and trauma had forced her to retreat deep within herself. Her eyes were glassy and soulless, unseeing even if they were opened.

"Rica... Rica, look at me." Ivy took her little sister's face in her hands, trying to get her blank eyes to focus on her. "You're bleeding too much. I need to feed you some of my blood, okay?" With a start, I realise that indeed, Erica was bleeding profusely from wounds in her arms, deep, circular ones not unlike the ones on Seth's body. Had she been restrained in the same fashion, with stakes driven through her flesh?

Without any indication that the gesture caused her pain, Ivy sliced her own wrist using the pixy sword that somehow managed not to get lost in the hustle and the explosion. The blade, glowing a faint, soothing blue, gave off an almost mournful, melancholic aura as it cut its bound owner's flesh.

"I know. Sweetie, I know." Ivy cajoled her whimpering sister squirming in her arms, gagging and choking as her big sister's blood was poured down her throat, carrying the undead's life force onto her to mend her body. It either wasn't much for taste, or it hurt like hell. "Erica, I know it's gross, but you've got to keep it down. Keep it down, honey." She encouraged for several seconds before pulling her wrist away. Apparently satisfied with the impromptu treatment after a few pained mouthfuls of blood made it through, Ivy guided Erica's head into the crook of her neck, whispering softly to her.

I couldn't stand this. Seeing Seth torn apart was one thing, one terrible, horrifying thing that assuredly give me nightmare material for many a night to come, but the fact remained that I had been too late then. I couldn't help him, and while the helplessness had been one kind of torment, there was something I could do to save Erica from an existence as a lifeless shell.

With determined strides, I walked back to the SUV, leaving the sisters alone in the cold wet snow, Ivy rocking a stabilised and rapidly healing Erica without getting so much as a blink from her. I engraved the image of her blank stare in my mind, using it to steel my resolve. Grabbing my shoulder bag from its resting place within the confines of the huge vehicle, and after dropping Jenks off inside, I brutally pulled it open and searched its contents for the two little vials I had been so torn over barely an hour ago. My moral compass was instantly trampled beneath my heel the second it tried to instil even the barest of moral dilemma in me.

"Rache, wait." Jenks stopped me dead in my tracks. "If you make Erica forget, you'll lose your chance to find out who this guy is."

I scoffed harshly, my eyes narrowing in anger. "I can find him on my own. I'll go to hell before I let Erica spend a second longer than she has to that way."

I didn't miss a beat walking back to Ivy with my grey charms in hand.

"Here. Make her drink these." I handed both vials to the undead vamp, who shot me a quizzical look. "Memory charms." I explained. "One should erase the latest traumatic memories from her mind. Two of them should make it impossible for her to even have a nightmare about what happened tonight." The 'beauty' of a memory charm is that the greater the damage to the mind they are used on, the greater the effect is. Erica would have absolutely not recall of this accursed night, and unless she used a Pandora charm to get them back, she never would, unlike me, who was getting more and more flashes of my suppressed memories.

"Thank you." Ivy nodded gratefully at me, her gaze slowly going from my face to our hands. The little glass vials clattered like chimes when they went into her gloved hand. Using her teeth since she needed a hand to keep Erica upright, Ivy pulled the little corks out of the bottles and forced Erica to take them much as she had with her blood minutes earlier. The young vampire grimaced briefly before her face melted into a blissfully innocent expression. Without waiting, and with much more cooperation from her this time, Ivy made her drink the second helping of potion, this one knocking her out cold. Erica sank happily into deep, dreamless sleep; she would be herself again once she woke up, as if this night had never happened. It wasn't a true get out of jail free card, though. Once sleep released her, she would lose Seth again, but her psyche would not bear the scars of watching him agonise. She would mourn, be heartbroken, but she had a chance to overcome now.

"Let's get out here." I said, Ivy answering with a weary nod, scooping up her little sister both with ridiculous ease, like she weighed nothing, and great care, as if she feared the young vamp might break if she wasn't careful. Ivy's clothes had suffered from the blast, and she smelled singed, but she didn't look all that worse for wear from getting blown up. It was a semi-unexpected relief to see it; to be fair, I didn't truly believe I could watch her die again unfazed, but the sheer strength of it was yet another distressing sign to add to an already long list...

By the time we got back to the car, Reed was behind the wheel, having carried an unconscious but healthy Heidi back and seated her by his side in the passenger seat. Ivy and I sat next to each other, the undead keeping her little sister close to her heart, like the young vampire was the most treasured object she could possess. Tirelessly, Ivy's hand stroked Erica's matted and dishevelled ebon hair, soft, soothing sound escaping her every time a bump in the road stirred her from slumber.

I didn't understand what I was seeing, but I did understand how dangerous the tender and bittersweet thoughts the sight of them evoked were. With a distressing effort of will, I forced myself to look away. That list just kept getting longer; I had to get away from her.

"Will you take her in again?" Ivy asked me along the way, the burning house left far behind. "You've done a good job keeping her safe. I'd be grateful if you continued."

"I don't think I did that good." I noted guiltily, taking in the bruises on Erica's face on her clothes. She had come so close to being lost to us tonight... "She got snatched aft-"

"Because our father was complacent. She wasn't kidnapped on your watch, but on his." She interrupted me. "Dear Heart, you saved her tonight. Not me, not Reed and Heidi, not Jenks. We were all too late. Not you. You have absolutely nothing to blame yourself for."

"I don't want anything to do with your war, Ivy." I warned her. "If I agree to watch her, that's all I'm doing."

"It's all I'm asking for. I'll tell my father the church needs to be put under our mutual protection for as long as our dispute is unresolved. He'll convince my mother, for Erica's sake. You'll be safe there, you have my word."

After a brief, almost dismissive acknowledging nod, I remained silent most of the rest of the way back. Ivy didn't look like she resented me for it, focused as she was on her baby sister. Soon, we pulled over at the church. Reed extricated his huge frame from the SUV's interior, stealing a long glance at the sleeping Heidi while he thought no one was looking. Ivy followed him out and handed Erica to him, the young vamp looking small and fragile in his arms. Ivy would probably have tucked Erica in her old bed herself, but the church was still partly sanctified, which included both her bedroom and mine. I offered Jenks my hand, and he hopped on with a deep shuddering breath, his fear of his waiting wife clear on his youthful face.

For the second time tonight I followed the big vamp, this time into familiar surroundings. He managed our heavy oak door with ease, even with an armful of sleeping teenage vamp, and followed his nose straight into Ivy's old bedroom, disappearing from sight. I continued straight ahead past the bedroom into the kitchen.

"Time to face the music, Jenks." I smiled sadly at the discomfited pixy. He shot me a stormy look in return before miserably signalling a few of his nearby elder sons to help him to the greenhouse in our backyard. With a yawn, I turned back into the hallway to see how Reed managed tucking in Erica.

"How is she doing?" I asked the big vamp from the threshold of Ivy's room.

"As well as she can be, all things considered." Reed answered, not looking up from tucking the blankets under the teenage vamp's chin. It was really something to see the huge man, still in full tactical gear, tucking in a young woman. Heart warming was the right word, and heart warming was something I really, really needed after the night's events. "If she really drank Ivy's blood, you're gonna want to have some orange juice for her when she wakes up. Nature really hates us committing incest. Gave us a few incentives not to." I remembered how Erica had reacted when drinking from Ivy, how it had disgusted her enough that it broke through her haze of pain and numbness. "She's gonna have a nasty aftertaste in mouth after that."

"Is it dangerous?" I asked, concerned for the peacefully sleeping teenager. "Is she going to be okay?"

"She ought to be. It's mostly just a natural deterrent to keep undead parents from snacking on their kids, no matter how far gone they are, but it works between all relatives. Try to take your brother's blood, and the odds are it'll revolt you so much you'll puke it up. Just let her sleep for now, but have some juice ready for her."

More silent than me despite the heavy combat boots encasing his feet, Reed exited the room. I followed him, seeing him to the door before I gave him a little piece of parting advice.

"You have a real shot with Heidi, you know." I told him, calling him out on his obvious affections for her. "Just lose the shameless flirt act and show her you really mean it."

"I... You think so?" He asked hopefully... in a deep but perfectly normal, accent-free voice. My smile got a little broader.

"I heard that, funny guy." I smirked mockingly at him.

"I no-o-o-o-o." He repeated himself, this time drawling his fake Irish brogue ridiculously hard. We both shared a chuckle. Under better circumstances, it might have been a full blown laugh. "She looks a little cold at first, but when you get to know her, she's just so... so brave, so smart and, and selfless and... Damnit, Rachel, she's so far out of my league it ain't even funny."

"And I suppose you're a coward, an idiot and an ass? No she's not, you silly man. Trust me, she's waiting with baited breath for you to really notice her. Stop 'flirting with anything with ovaries', and go for it."

Reed might or might not have been blushing at my gentle poke, but it was too dark for me to tell with certainty. He muttered something totally noncommittal before facing me with his arm extended, clearly intent on cutting this short before I could force him to probe his feelings deeper.

"I wish I could say it's been a pleasure working with you, Rachel, but it's been far too crummy a night for that." He declared, offering me his hand to shake. "Not your fault that. Would've been mighty worse if not for you. Thanks. I'll see you around."

"Take care, Reed." I answered, letting his big hand swallow up mine. "Keep what I said in mind, huh?"

"I'll do that."

I watched him climb back into the SUV, watched it drive away, and relaxed just a little when it rounded the corner, taking with it my greatest fear. Tonight had taught me something, when I lost my mind in terror, thinking that Ivy had been killed again alongside Erica; my heart was not to be trusted. Ivy had let me go this time, but she hadn't been set on catching me either. I might not be so lucky next time, once she no longer needed me to keep her little sister safe.

After shutting the door for the last time tonight, and barring it, I kicked off my booths in the foyer and hung my coat before stretching luxuriously from my toes to my fingertips, a small moan escaping me as I did. My throat felt parched from the smoke I inhaled at the house, so I headed back to the kitchen, taking only a brief moment to properly shut the door to Erica's room. My only thoughts for the moment being a bottle of water, I somehow wasn't put on guard when a soft, familiar noise came from the kitchen...

"So, I believe I promised you a talk, didn't I?" Ivy declared, looking up from her computer spot as soon as I walked in, the sight of her barefoot in her favourite grey sweater and tight black jeans so heart-wrenchingly familiar it knocked the wind out of me and almost made me stumble back. "I made coffee if you want some. Pull up a chair. We might be here a while."

I sucked in a panicked breath as the gravity of my situation hit me. Jenks was probably getting his lame wing removed and getting a dressing down (maybe in more ways than one; there's something to be said for angry sex) from his wife, Erica would be out until morning, and Ivy could easily run me down before I made it to the safety of holy ground... I was officially stuck alone with her, and she was looking very happy about that.

Even worse, I wasn't entirely sure I didn't agree with her...


	20. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

A/N: Done apologising for killing Ivy. Now all I'll apologise for are my long-ass delays. Sorry guys, I know I suck. I got a new job recently, and it sort of sapped my desire to write. Hopefully, the next chapter won't take quite so long, but every time I promise that, it ends up taking half of eternity...

Enjoy. Oh, and mind the M rating, if you know what I mean.

I made no move to sit down when Ivy nudged a chair for me right next to her and gestured with her eyes for me to take a seat. The warring desires to flee or... to screw the chair over and sit straight on her lap had effectively rooted me in place. Cold sweat ran slowly down my spine, my breathing becoming shallow and rapid and my fingers-

"Rachel, it's okay. There's really no need for you to get all worked up." Ivy chided me, her fingertips absently tracing her name engraved on the ancient oak wood of her huge table the only sign of impatience she demonstrated. She didn't react to my fear the usual way. Her face used to shut down whenever she inadvertently spooked me this way, but this time, there was a heavy-lidded, almost lazy look about her. Her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly, her breathing deepened just a fraction, but the signs she showed all pointed to one thing; enjoyment. She enjoyed the scent of my fear. It made me wonder if the slight annoyance was about her libido and bloodlust she wouldn't get to satisfy with me more than my reluctance itself...

"What are you doing here?" I asked her very quietly. My veiled hostility felt really thin; I couldn't keep the fear out of my voice... or was it the lust that made it tremble? Or my nerves, that were getting a fucking workout these past few weeks? I just couldn't tell.

"The last time I checked, my rent was paid through the next two months. This is still my home." Ivy smirked at me, one of her eyebrow rising defiantly, daring me to keep trying to oust her. "All my stuff is still in the church. I have every right to be here. If you want me out, ring up our four-inch tall landlord, and evict me. Then I'll see him in court, of course. I've done nothing that would justify an eviction, and last I checked it's illegal to discriminate your tenants based on species, gender or... sexual orientation." She added the last in a smoky, suggestive tone that made the pit of my stomach clench. Leave it to Ivy to paraphrase the law and make it sound like phone sex...

Seeing me still unmoving, she sighed and stood up. With all the familiarity she could only have gained living here, she searched our... the cupboards for my favourite oversized "Vampiric Charms" logo mug, and poured me some of that coffee she made. Slowly, as if I were a kitten she didn't want to spook, she approached me with it. It smelled heavenly, I noted from what little of its scent I dared to breathe in; with her so close, a shallow breathing was my only defence against the outpour of pheromones she was no doubt putting out.

"Where should I put you once you pass out? Chair or couch?" Ivy asked me jokingly, understanding what I was doing perfectly, my mistrust seemingly only amusing her further. "Come on. Take the mug and sit down. You look like you could use both."

"I'm not playing your game, Ivy." I stood firm and refused the offered mug. "You're wasting your time."

"Hmm? What game?" The undead asked me, one of her perfectly sculpted eyebrow arching delicately in that confident manner I always envied. "I don't know what you're-"

"Quit playing dumb!" I cut her off. "The clothes? The mug of coffee? Sitting at your usual spot? I'm surprised there's no jazz playing." I said snidely with a confidence I didn't feel. "I'm not playing _that_ game, Ivy. You're trying to get under my skin."

"Not nearly so deep actually..." Ivy drawled sensuously with a smile to melt a freaking iceberg that sucker punched me. The raw, predatory seduction had me taking a step backward; a mistake, given that she took it as an opportunity to take two towards me. My eyes wild with fear, I had to fight my urge to run into the open hallway behind me. I would be pinned to the floor in half a second flat if I did, quite possibly with her fangs burying their way into my throat.

I'd like to say that my ungraceful scramble to push past her back into the kitchen was a carefully weighed gambit, but I'm not that big a liar. All I know is that she let me do it without a fuss, even going as far as to sidestep out of my way. She didn't follow me quite as closely when she turned around to face me again, the steaming mug of coffee still in her hand.

"I'm sorry." She apologised without a hint of sincerity while I hyperventilated and stared at her with wide, wild eyes. "You have to admit, you walked right into that one, though." Ivy's smile turned friendly and gently mocking, the undead stowing away the overly sultry voice she had used a moment ago. Now that she was between me and safety, the overt sex appeal just melted away, leaving only a familiar, amicable face. "You're being paranoid, honey."

"I don't think the word applies when there's an undead openly hunting you in your kitchen." I sneered shakily, manoeuvring to place the island counter between us. It was a flimsy defence, but that was better than no defence at all. "You're not paranoid when someone's really out to get you."

"I don't think that word applies either. How can I hunt you if I've already caught you, Dear Heart?" She replied, still smiling, though it wasn't broad enough to flash her fangs. I had yet to see her new and improved set of teeth... Very smooth on her part. She had her old self down pat; Ivy never flashed her fangs before, unless she wanted to intimidate someone... "Whatever gave you that idea?"

"Everything you just did, maybe?" I pointed out accusingly and started counting down on my fingers. "The clothes..."

"My clothes were singed when the house blew up. So I changed while you spoke with Reed. I took what was still in the laundry room." She explained dismissively, pulling on the hem of her long, shapeless grey sweater, comfortable but hardly the grandest fashion statement she could make, no matter how good she made it look. "If I were hunting you, I would have chosen my nightie, or at least a skirt or something skimpier, and let your libido do the rest. And I wouldn't have bothered with the underwear."

"Don't show me." I yelled before she could get any funny ideas, the thought that she might start to strip enough that I didn't pick up on the jab about me being a slut. "You snuck in." Ah-ha! That was a definite number two reason why I should be wary.

"I didn't sneak in, I had to come in the back... or don't you remember the way from the sanctuary is sanctified?" She replied before lazily raising the mug she had poured for me to her lips and taking a sip, her eyes rolling in silent impatience.

"The coffee..." The accusation came out with an embarrassed quietness. I was at three, and quickly running out of ire to throw at her.

"Yes, that was my devilish plan, getting a pot of your favourite drink going. I've clearly been sneaking around the church stalking you for the past weeks, learning all there is to know about you so I could better entrap you. Knowing your tastes clearly has nothing to do with sharing floor space with you for almost two years. You outplayed me there, well done." She huffed sarcastically, staring at me with her head tilted and her hip cocked in annoyance. "Seriously, do you feel you're grasping at straws yet?"

"Your... computer spot?" Yeah, it came out weakly. I was starting to feel stupid. And scared. And maybe or maybe not a little lustful. Not my favourite combination. In fact I really hated it.

"Are you accusing me of trying to be me?" Ivy smirked, no doubt sensing my imminent defeat. "I barely had a moment to myself these past few weeks, and no access to a computer while I was in the hospital. That's a month without checking my emails or posting anywhere. I took a moment to update my status on a few sites while you were talking to Reed. My friends were starting to wonder what was up with me, if I was... dead, or something." She scoffed darkly at her own joke, and tilted her head at me, curious about what I would throw at her next.

"Satisfied?" She asked me when no more accusations came forth out of my mouth. "Can we sit down and talk like two reasonable adults, now? Sometime before I run out of moonlight, if at all possible? Or should we do this standing stupidly, like a pair of signposts?"

I blew out a breath and moved to the table, where I grumpily sat down clearly across from her computer spot. Ivy made a vague sound of annoyed disapproval, and moved briefly away to pour me a second mug, the first one she seemed to have appropriated for herself sitting on the island counter. She placed the nearly identical mug before me, her eyes searching for contact I refused to give her, my only acknowledgement an almost inarticulate thanks. Perhaps in response to my choice of seating arrangements, Ivy chose to remain standing, leaning casually against the island counter right behind me, almost too close for comfort. I was real quick in spinning my chair around and facing her...

"So, I'm sure you've got a lot questions." The snide undead said after a sip of coffee that made her click her tongue in satisfaction, ignoring the dark look I shot her in my discomfort at having the this close. "Fire away."

"Do you have to stand up this close?" I squeaked uncomfortably.

"_That's_ your first question?" Ivy drawled sarcastically and leaned closer, murmuring in a low, throaty voice. "Do you have to be such a pussycat?"

A wordless chortle of denying outrage made its way out of my throat, but somehow the undead didn't look convinced when she righted herself, a smug look on her face. I grumbled something very righteous and magnanimous-sounding about giving her my permission to stand there, which only made it worse.

"What was that, darling?" Ivy snickered and leaned back, her smile still mocking. I resisted the urge to flip her off and graciously moved on, because I'm just grand like that. Yeah...

My mental list of questions was pretty long, but I quickly realised one was at the very top, nagging at me ever since I saw Ivy in the car. "What happened to you? After Nathalie killed you?" I asked rather quietly, the words evoking painful memories both in my heart and the rest of my body. The venom still left in my veins was quiet for now, but that didn't stop my brain from re-enacting the moment the ancient vampire had bitten me, just like it did whenever my thoughts took me to that fateful day. That's 'way too often', in case you were wondering.

"I figured you would start with that. You probably wonder why I don't have the IQ of a five year old, right?"

"It crossed my mind." I acknowledged. "What happened?"

"Something both unlucky and very lucky." Ivy answered, crossing her arms. The gesture wasn't intimidating or assertive, more like she was unconsciously huddling into herself from cold or pain. "I didn't die straight away when Nathalie tossed out that window, but not even a living vamp can survive a ten-story fall unscathed."

"You mean you... actually lived?" Guilt hit me hard at that revelation, harder than it had in the past weeks. Damnit, if she had been alive after that fall, then maybe... maybe I could have kept her alive long enough for me to save her somehow. Save her soul...

"Yes, but just barely." Ivy continued, her voice still distant. "When Skimmer rushed to my side, I was only so much meat on the pavement. Most of my internal organs were crushed to a bloody pulp, my limbs were broken like twigs, and yet I could feel nothing below the neck. The fall broke pretty much every bone in my body, including my spine."

"You were paralysed..." I stated with the sharpest sense of deduction the world had ever seen. Seriously, I should have gone to med school instead of interning at the I.S...

"Quite completely." Ivy tried to sound matter-of-fact about it, but fell a little short, which was understandable. Vampires who aren't born crippled go completely bat-shit insane in a matter of hours when injuries the likes of hers happen to them. Their instincts can't cope with their newfound helplessness; it's so bad that laws on assisted suicide have an exception written about living vamps, since transitioning into undeath fixed the damage both physical and mental. Even if Ivy was only briefly paralysed, she went through hell in those few minutes, and just the memory of those events was enough to trouble her. Undead does not mean fearless or immune to pain. She looked vulnerable all of a sudden and I couldn't help but feel for her... a feeling I promptly kicked down and curb-stomped before it could blossom. I felt like I was ignoring a wet kitten with a broken paw mewling for my attentions in the pouring rain, but at least I didn't give Ivy an opening once more.

"I'm sorry." I told her simply, somehow managing to keep my dangerous compassion at bay. "I had no idea."

"You had other problems on your mind by the time this happened." Ivy shrugged, her vulnerability just disappearing in a blink, almost as if she were only testing the waters, trying to find a chink in my wavering emotional armour… or maybe she was truly feeling hurt I looked so unaffected by the hell she went through and hid behind her mask of aloofness, just like she used to. I didn't know which was worst, that she might be actively hunting me or that she might not. "It wasn't a picnic for you either. I hear the bliss of Nathalie's bite is only matched by the agony it can put you through if she wills it. As someone who felt the pleasure side of the coin, I've got to tip my hat to you. The length of time you've been subjected to her venom… it's impressive that you even survived long enough for her to cure you, let alone stayed sane."

"Nathalie…" I had to force the name of the evil bitch through my clenched teeth; memories of what she had put me through were starting to fray at the edges of my consciousness. The agony of having my senses overloaded with the most overbearing pain I could ever fathom… the simple memory of it was enough to make my eyes water. "You still haven't told me what she did. How can getting splattered over half a city block be considered lucky?"

"It wasn't fortunate that I was crippled, of course. That's the unfortunate part. Even if it was hell, I was lucky not to die straight away, however."

"Why? Wouldn't it have been better to get it over with?" I asked very quietly. Ms Subtlety, that's me.

"No." Ivy shook her head. "If I'd died straight away, that would have been it. I would have fallen in post-death stupor for the next thirty years. Being 'merely' grievously wounded gave Nathalie a rare chance to help me, though."

"But you're…" I began, stammering, gesticulating towards her. _You're dead. If that's the end result, then Nathalie's help blows as much as her taste in bed partners..._

"Not to sound conceited, but I believe the word you're looking for is 'magnificent'." Ivy chuckled humorously, which turned my eyes into a pair of dinner plates. "Perfect would be pushing it a little far, I'm as diurnally challenged as can be nowadays, but still…"

"You're _dead_, Ivy." I interjected, barely able to believe what I was hearing. I never thought I'd hear Ivy talk about herself that way. 'Monster', 'ugly', 'broken', sure, those were part of her every day vocabulary. Magnificent? Not in a thousand years.

"You don't think it looks good on me?" Ivy asked, her eyebrows shooting up in mock consternation before she gave herself a quick once over. God help me, yes, she had a point. Death did look good on her. As fit as she had been in life, the virus really had little to improve upon, so the change wasn't anything I could directly point to, but she was different. She had that relaxed posture, that lazy, both sleepy and sharply aware look vampires who freely indulged in their bloodlust have, something she never once showed me in the time I knew her. Her complexion was paler than ever, yet far from sickly; she looked healthier than she had in life. Hell, she looked like freaking afterglow, less than an hour after a house blew up around her and her baby sister.

"I… Well, I… You're..." I stammered, dumbfounded, making an open-throated laugh erupt from Ivy's mouth, her hand brought before her mouth to hide her fangs. Her sparkling brown eyes seemed to stare straight through my skin to gaze upon the fluttering of attraction I still felt bubbling up in the pit of my stomach.

_Crap on toast_… I cursed silently. I was. Screw her first death, I was totally still attracted to Ivy, and she absolutely knew it. I couldn't hide it from her when she was alive, and I sure as hell couldn't now that she was dead. I saw the knowledge in her eyes, plain as day.

"Weren't you about to tell me what happened to you?" I asked after clearing my throat noisily, the change in subject barely managing to break the simmering tension Ivy's gaze summoned. I was still blushing and feeling like my skin was an ill-fit, but snapping her memories back to the pain she felt upon her first death did the trick. It got me a sharp leer from the raven-haired vampire though, who had clearly been looking forward to hearing what I thought of her new and improved undead body.

_I wonder if I'll pay for that in the near future..._

"Right." Ivy muttered a little glumly, her eyes leaving mine and dropping to the floor. Almost nervously, she wiggled her toes, as if to remind herself that she still could. "Well, I think I told you before how all high-blooded living vamps will transition into undeath upon death. I don't think you know how and why it happens, though."

"Huh, I'm not exactly well versed in biology, but I understand the broad strokes." I said, summoning the rather distant memories of my Inderland biology classes and reciting them with hesitating sluggishness. "If I remember correctly, the vamp virus is mostly concentrated in the marrow of a living vampire's bones. It's active during the last five months of pregnancy, when it fills in blanks in the foetus' DNA, then it goes dormant. The vamp's immune system produces... antibodies to keep it suppressed. The process stops when the body dies, which allows the virus to activate and flood the vamp's system. It infects every cell anew and reanimates the vamp."

"You did your homework. Well put." Ivy nodded approvingly, an approval that, despite myself, I felt warming me. "However, you're wrong on one count. The virus doesn't always wait for death to become active. Sometimes, when injuries are truly severe and a living vampire's regeneration can't keep up with the trauma, the body will simply cease to produce antibodies, and within a short span of time the virus will take over the healing process. It'll harness dead cells and reanimate them, just like it would in an undead."

"But that's... Ivy, that's impossible. It doesn't make sense." I reasoned, my eyebrows scrunching up in confusion. "It can't be right. If any living vamp can have an undead's regeneration abilities whenever they're close to death, then how come any number of them die from driving accidents, or gunshot wounds, or... falls." It wasn't tact that made my voice hesitate at the last point; I was intentionally prodding at her, and if she did show a reaction, I wanted to catch it. Sure enough, her eyes darkened once more, which made me wonder if this truly was a sore spot for her. I felt oh so great doing that... If she was faking it, she was doing a damn good job of it.

"It sounds great in theory, right?" Ivy scoffed, looking a little wounded by my callousness once again. "Well, that's because there's this lovely catch to it. Theoretically, a vampire could heal from any injury thanks to the virus, but if the process is allowed to continue unchecked, it's guaranteed a hundred percent lethal. The virus isn't content to just fix the damage and then go back in its cage. Once it's out, it wants to fulfil its purpose. It runs amok everywhere and starts to repurpose organs to fit an undead's needs. I can tell you, what I need my liver for now has nothing to do with a living person's use for it."

"So by fixing the body, the virus kills it?" I deduced, right before a connection lit up in my head. "That's... Isn't that what happened to you right after you were shot? The docs said you got sick because the virus in you became active."

"I never pictured you for a teacher's pet, Rachel. It's oddly... fetching." Ivy smirked, her voice part seductive, part teasing. Which one made me blush again was anyone's guess. "Brownie point for your memory skills, you're spot on. That's exactly why I got sick, and why I showed more similarities with undead vampires than usual. When the surgeons fixed the damage the bullet did, my natural healing picked up again, and so did my immune system. It promptly destroyed the virus that had become active. I ran a fever and got tired during the daylight hours for a week or so, but other than that, I was no worse for wear. A ten-stories drop though? That's in another league. I was too far gone. Don't beat yourself up, Dear Heart. You couldn't have saved me." Ivy added comfortingly, gazing upon my face with a soft look that threatened to steal my breath away. I nodded vaguely in acknowledgement, her words somehow failing to provide much comfort in the wake of the overwhelming wave of feeling that had almost sent me straight into the vampire's arms, begging for forgiveness.

"The progressive change is what saved me." There was no shift in Ivy's voice, but her gaze turned sharper, like a predator sensing blood... which she was. Still, she didn't push the advantage my guilt gave her. "No doubt you know that a living vampire cannot be turned again. Their immune system either destroys whatever strains get injected in their veins or it gets overrun and the vamp simply dies, at which point the native virus strains will flood the attacked system and purge it. In my case, though, my immune system was shutting down by the time Nathalie got to my side. She bit me once more, but this time, she didn't do it for pleasure or blood. She did the exact same thing she would have done had I been a ghoul she wanted to help cross over. She absolutely flooded my veins with her strains. Her virus caught mine with its pants down as it was just sluggishly awakening, and completely wiped it out before taking its place." Slowly, Ivy brought her hand to her face and flexed her fingers, studying the motion with an eerie fascination. "On a ghoul, it's one thing, but I had a body truly fit to hold this gift. It wasn't long before I crossed over, and when I did, I awakened with the strength and clarity of a vampire roughly two hundred years old. That's far more power than any other vampire in this city, and more than enough to hold it."

"Even more important than power, I bypassed my post-death stupor. Under normal circumstances, my brain would have died along with the rest of my body, and it would have taken years for the virus to fully revive it, but Nathalie started off as a human. It may seem irrelevant, but it actually is." Ivy continued her explanation. "All of Inderland may look down at them, but turned vampires do have a few perks that save them from being totally worthless. Their viral strains have already turned their own bodies; they took notes, if you will, like any micro-organism will. It's more potent when it comes to infecting new hosts than that of a high blooded undead of the same age. Their victims fare better, and so did I. Nathalie's infection worked so miraculously fast that I suffered almost no brain damage at all. It took hours for me to shake off my post-death stupor instead of days thanks to her."

"So you think that makes you lucky?" I asked quietly, the "miracle" that had befallen Ivy passing way above my head. "Because you got a whole lot of power out of it?"

"I was incredibly lucky, Rachel." She continued fervently, completely missing the point. "How can you not see the way the stars had to align for this to happen? I've kept my mind and jumped easily two hundred years ahead in my development, all in a matter of hours. It was the culmination of events a thousand years in the making."

"Whatever." I didn't have to fake how much I didn't care this time. Ivy didn't get it, she had no clue of the price she paid for her new strength, namely me. For the first time since she came back, I got a sense of how much she had changed. I didn't feel curious anymore, not even morbidly so. The last flickers of hope were going out. Now I just wanted her to go.

"What's wrong?" Ivy asked, apparently getting down from her power high long enough to notice my heart was getting shot to hell. It was too late for me to fall for her faked concern again though.

"You really need to ask?" I shot back bitterly. Yelling at an undead vampire really didn't seem like a good idea, but I had to get it out of my system. "You really can't figure out what's wrong with me? Let's start with how you used to hate violence, yet as soon as you came back, the first thing you did was start a bloody war! Then there's the way you lied to me, to Glenn, to Erica, to everyone who used to love you! We all thought you lost your mind that first day. You betrayed all of our trust in you so you could stab your old master in the back!" I paused to take a breath. I still had one thorn in my side, one that had been planted there by that damn banshee three weeks ago. "Oh, and while we're on the subject of trust, I might as well throw in how you have a freaking daughter you never told me about! Thanks a lot for the confidence. What, you didn't think I could handle the competition?"

I wish I could say my rant fazed Ivy, but her look remained placid and patient all throughout, as if she expected the outburst and had been ready for it. Knowing her, it was true on both count. Only when I mentioned Holly did her composure slip a bit.

"Hmm, now when exactly would that full disclosure have come up?" Ivy replied, turning defensive for the first time tonight. "How exactly could I approach that subject, do you think? 'Oh, Rachel, you remember that first night we spent under the same roof? The one you nearly drove me insane by tripping all over my instincts? Well it turns out that I was bullied into my banshee friend's bed and she had her way with me that night. Oh, and we have a daughter together too, so I'm one of the rare rape victim whose rapist was the one who got pregnant. Isn't this grand?'" She recited in a high falsetto, shook her head and regarded me darkly. "I don't think so. Mia and Holly are my business, not yours."

"And what exactly does 'your business' involve? Gonna make Holly the Tamwood heir and get your mom off your back?" I snapped at her, surprising myself with the intensity of my resentment. Goddamn, I didn't realise how much Mia's revelations had hurt, at least the part where she had Ivy's child. She might be tainted by the circumstances under which she had been conceived, but Holly truly was all that was left of my Ivy, which meant that Mia still had a true, tangible connection with her, while all I had were memories and my twisted, confusing feelings towards this creature that was and wasn't my vampire. "What about Mia? Are you gonna kill her for what she's done to you, now that you've got the upper hand?"

"Holly may be my daughter, but she's not a vampire, so no on the first. Mia did give her my name, but she'll never be recognised as my heir." Ivy answered tightly, her jaw barely moving, her longer hair now long enough to hide her lowered eyes from sight. "And while I may not be as fond of Mia as I once was, she's the only one who can take care of Holly right now, so I need her. I already made sure they're safe, from vampires and other banshees at least. Yes, other banshees. That Mia got pregnant without killing has caught the attention of a few unsavoury types. The banshee underworld may be small, but it's vicious. Some have already tried and failed to kidnap Holly so they could find out how Mia did it. I tore them apart personally." From a low, deathly tone, her voice rose, becoming louder, angrier.

"You're so quick to judge me, yet you have no idea why I did what I did." Ivy snarled. "You accuse me of being in love with power without even asking me why I need it. Let me give you the reasons why I'm fighting, witch. Maybe they'll sound familiar... Erica Randall? Holly Tamwood? Annabelle Tamwood? Kisten Felps?"

Abruptly, she raised her gaze, her brown eyes meeting mine with unapologetic conviction, killing whatever I might have been about to say to counter her dead. "Rachel Morgan?" She said my name with such finality I almost flinched, but Ivy paid me no heed. She counted down on her fingers, stating in turn; "A sister, a daughter, a mother, a friend, a lover, these are the reasons why I need to rise above everyone else and rule. I've lost my mom, Kist, and almost lost you to this god forsaken system I live in. Tonight, someone thought he could mess with me and tried to kill my baby sister. He killed a boy I held in my arms when he was just a baby." A cold draft seemed to sweep the room out of nowhere, a physical manifestation of Ivy righteous rage. "Now I've had it. I won't sit by while the only illusion of safety given to my loved ones comes from whimsical devils. I will become this city's Master, and I will make it safe for those I care about, whether it wants to be made safe or not."

"What makes _us_ so special?" I shouted. "What makes our lives worth more than the hundreds you've ruined? Don't think I haven't followed the body count, Ivy. You've been busy these past weeks, and none of it was pretty."

"This city is my birthright, Rachel." Ivy replied, just barely more composed than she was a minute ago. "I'm not responsible for what happens to those who forgot that little fact."

"What?"

"Oh, now I'm insulted." Ivy rolled her eyes and pushed off the counter. Her arms crossed, she began to pace the kitchen, graceful and deadly. She looked like her instincts were bursting at the seams. _God, what am I doing antagonising her..._ It would be just as safe to take a bath in marinade and go prod a starving tiger with a sharp stick. At least the tiger would kill me before eating me...

"Do you honestly think I go around killing people at random, witch?" Ivy spat venomously at me. "If I want to rule Cinci, then there needs to still be a Cinci left to rule once this is over. Yes, I've shed blood, but I always tried diplomacy first, and most of the time, the other party saw reason. The only exception being those who messed with you, of course. Lee is probably regretting trying to kill you dearly by now, Trent as well. I've gone a little easier on those two were fools, Ray and Sarong, but I'm sure they have regrets nonetheless."

"I've heard the news, Ivy." I refused to believe her. She was downplaying her guilt, she had to be. "There are hundreds of dead and missing."

"... Not all of which are my handiwork. It's not me against the world out there." The vampire explained roughly. She stopped pacing, making a visible effort to calm down. Her slender frame was wracked with stress and tension, almost enough to snap. Her hands kept opening and closing, as if she wanted to wrap them around something and strangle the life out of it, and her looks were so murderous I didn't think she'd mind if that something was orange, cute and fuzzy. Thank God Rex wasn't around. Damn kitty had more sense than me...

_Maybe I should stay quiet for a while... Yeah, that sounds good._

"It's a power vacuum." Ivy continued since I didn't interrupt her, slowly cooling off the longer I kept my mouth shut. "It's unfortunate, but taking out Rynn created a shift of power in Cinci that I'm just beginning to get under control. Most every minor vampire house tried to grab anything they could to improve their standing, and that's not counting the other species. They're not as careful as I am when increasing their holdings. They work sloppily. They prefer to hit fast and first than talk, and they fight over every scrap. Like animals." She paused for a second, a hard smile spreading across her features. "It won't help them in the end. They'll get in line, or they'll get dead."

"Did you really have to kill him, then?" I muttered more meekly, which didn't aggravate her. "If it's so bad, wouldn't it have been better to just negotiate with him?"

"After what he said to you, and how he tried to screw me over? Yes, I had to... forcefully remove him." Ivy declared, sounding like she believed it. "He should have handed the Camarilla over to me and stepped down from Master to advisor while I recovered. Heck, I would have accepted if he offered to let my family splinter from him and placed all of you directly under mine and my mother's protection, but he gave me nothing. Not even you. He wanted you for himself, for his stupid science fair project. _Nathalie_ had more courtesy than he did."

_Now that she brings it up..._

"What about her? Nathalie." I asked, trying to stay calm now that the conversation was almost civilised again. "What was her angle in all of this? Why would she help you?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Ivy chuckled darkly. "Tossing me out a window, with her bite marks on my neck and her scent smeared all over me, right into the arms of Skimmer? No, she didn't do it for my health. She had to do _something_ to smooth things over with her old favourite..." Ivy trailed off.

"Skimmer? What the hell did she..." I couldn't even begin to fathom what the blond vamp had done to convince her millennia old mistress to give Ivy a hand crossing over.

"... yell at Nathalie until she did something? Threaten never to speak a word to her again, to hell with the consequences? Yes." Ivy nodded, an admiring look softening her features. "I almost wish I could remember it. It must have been something to see."

_Swell, Skimmer saved you when I couldn't_ again_?_ I thought, flabbergasted. _Does she practice saving your ass every day along with being a bitch or what?_ Then again, she had showed no price was too steep when it came to protecting Ivy the day she killed Piscary.

"Am I still the big bad ugly to you?" Ivy asked me while I mulled over the fact Skimmer had a better track record than I did when it came to rescuing our mutually favourite vamp. "Got any more petty accusations flitting around in that pretty little head of yours?"

"Besides the fact that I don't buy your 'I-fight-for-a-cause' bull? No." I shot back, gripping my resolve, and the line out back as a precaution. "You're smarter than that. If all you really wanted was to keep us safe, you would have found another way."

"I thought long and hard about it, Rachel." Ivy replied grimly. "There was no other course of action for me. Nathalie opened my eyes when she killed me. I believed I could make the deals necessary to keep you safe for too long. It took a reckoning sweeping our lives away out of nowhere for me to realise how fragile these bargains and blackmails we relied on were. There won't be any more of those."

"You can't love me, Ivy. You can't love at all." I spelled it out, standing my ground. "All those pretty words of yours? They're excuses, nothing more. You want power, that's all."

"Care to say that to my face, Rachel?" Ivy dared me in a growl. "Can you look me in eye and tell me I don't care about you? I don't love you? I'm not willing to do anything that doesn't endanger Erica or Holly to keep you safe?"

Of course, I was all defiant and sure of myself when I took that bet and thrust my gaze into hers like a lance, but I got cut down to size pretty quickly. There were angry flames in her eyes, but that wasn't why I backed down; there was so much more as well.

"You don't c-... You don't... You..." My voice started off steady and sure, but it broke into a sputtering mess almost straight away, just like my handle on the ley line. Goddamnit, how was I supposed to say those words while staring in her eyes, when she looked at me like _that_?

_Shit. She got me..._ It was obvious all of a sudden that she had used my anger to make my emotional control slip. I made myself vulnerable, and Ivy had plunged right into the opening I gave her.

Of course Ivy picked right up on that hesitation. Slowly, her hands raised and clearly in sight so I knew she meant me no harm, Ivy stepped closer to me, crouching so that her eyes were level with mine. She scanned my face, concern that looked so genuine I almost cried, in her eyes. The bags under my eyes, their slightly glazed, dull look, the chalky quality of my skin, the weight I'd lost in the past weeks, she took it all in. I looked like I was wasting away while she looked better than ever, yet judging by the look in her eyes, you would have thought I looked every bit as desirable as she did. Her eyes were awash with tenderness and compassion and concern so deep...

_The last thing I want you to do is the most important one. Stay away from me at all costs. No matter how much I look like my old self, don't listen to me, don't let me guilt you into anything. I'm dead, Rachel. I'm gone, and nothing can bring me back. If you don't remember this, I'll consume you._

Remembering Ivy's final warning was getting more difficult by the second now that Ivy was through my defences; almost against my will, I could feel myself surrendering to my heart's desire when she moved to actually touch me. Gentle as a butterfly's wings, the vampire touched my cheek, electricity seemingly crackling beneath her fingertips when she lightly stroked it.

"Are you ready to say it to my face now? Can you tell me I don't care, Dear Heart?" Ivy sighed, her voice matching her touch this time and her eyes searching for mine. She wanted eye contact again, and I wasn't sure I didn't as well. My eyes were as evasive as a pair of eels for a few seconds, but Ivy's were like a pair of dark holes, sucking them in without leaving me a say in the matter.

"You warned me to stay away..." I whimpered in protest, feeling the net tightening around me and desperately wanting out... _Wait, I do want out, right?_ "You said you would consume me if I... if we..." My reply wasn't a denial that she loved me, and to Ivy, that was as good as waving a white flag. There was a glitter of triumph in her eyes, but still she didn't push me. Maybe she wanted to savour the moment, or she wanted me to actually ask for what she had in mind...

"Oh. Is that what you're so afraid of? _Entre l'amour et la mort_, as Nathalie puts it?" Ivy asked with a soft, almost fond chuckle, her hand moving beneath my chin to tilt my face back up towards hers. "Dear Heart, even I couldn't foresee how things would turn out." She murmured, still inching nearer, her lips slowly drawing closer to mine, their intended destination obvious. "I was worried I might guilt you into becoming like my father, but I don't need anyone to fulfil that role, least of all you. I've bypassed this stage of my life altogether, remember?"

"You... you did?" I breathed out so very quietly, too out of it to remember how she had told me this just moments ago, hating myself for longing for that confirmation that maybe, just maybe...

"Yes... You don't need to be afraid. Just feel, Rachel." Ivy encouraged me, her grey silk voice hypnotically rubbing against my nerves, soothing them. "Doesn't it feel right to be close to me like this?"

_She's right. Would that really be so bad? Just to let go for once?_ The little voice of my impending defeat whispered maddeningly to me. The only way I could tear my eyes away from hers was to steal a quick glance at her lovely pink lips. Unconsciously, my tongue peeked out of my mouth, licking and wetting my own in anticipation.

_No... Yes... No. Yes. No! Yes! Yes! YES, it would be!_

"Stop it!" I stood up, jerking away from her so violently that my chair flew backwards and clattered to the floor, my eyes wide and panicked. Goddamn, was I ever stupid! Hello, undead vamp anyone? She could bespell me without my say-so now, and she had obviously been putting that gift to good use. "You treacherous bloodsucker, stop it!"

"Stop what?" Ivy asked calmly, cocking her head questioningly as she righted herself. Other than that, she made no move to close the distance between us. "Dear Heart, stop doing what?"

"Don't call me that! And you know what I mean!" I screeched at her, backing away until my back hit the kitchen wall. "You tried to bespell me, I'm sure of it!"

"Dear... Rachel, I did no such thing." Ivy assured me soothingly. "Calm down. You're being silly again."

"Why don't you just dose me up on pheromones if you want me to calm down so much?" Frantically, I reached behind me for the splat gun I'd tucked in my pants. "Stay back!" I ordered when the vampire began taking slow, graceful steps towards me. I kept the gun trained on her, jerking it towards her face for emphasis. "Stay back, I tell you!"

Of course, she just ignored me, like every other vamp I ever pointed that gun at. My hand started to quiver as she drew nearer, silent and deadly as a prowling panther. "Ivy, if you don't stay right where you are, I swear I'll tag you and leave you out for the sun!" I shrieked, but still, she kept coming, even as I slowly backed away. We circled the island counter, the distance between us still shrinking inch by inch. By the time I was right next to the sink, the barrel of my gun was almost pressed against her chest. My threats and orders had turned to soft pleading and begging, and I seemed to have developed a strange condition that somehow fused the bones of my trigger finger together, preventing me from flexing it, no matter how hard I tried...

Ivy took one step sideways and effectively cornered me against the kitchen counter, a soft, compassionate smile still spreading her perfect, glossy lips. Despite the little dance she had forced me into, her eyes were still mostly brown and lovely. I was panting, sweating and all-around going out of my mind, but she still wore the face of a perfectly composed, loving woman.

Not wishing to startle me, the vampire slowly raised her hand until it was level with my face, and gently wrapped her fingers around the wrist of my gun hand. Her thumb began a soft, stroking motion against the sensitive skin near my moist palm, but she made no move to pull the trembling gun away from her chest yet, even if these days she could tear the whole limb from its socket.

"Why are you doing this to me?" I half-sobbed; I couldn't help it, I was just breaking down by now. Cornered and on my way to being bespelled, helpless before an undead vampire who still held the remnants of my tattered heart, no matter how hard I tried to deny it, I just felt so utterly beaten. I was at the very end of my wits now. She almost had me, and there was nothing I could do.

"I'm not doing anything, Dear Heart." Ivy whispered earnestly. "You have my word of honour, I'm not doing anything at all. Whatever you're feeling comes from you. Only you."

"Don't call me that." I repeated, trying for a forceful tone, but it came out more pleading than anything else. "Please don't call me that." I downright implored her the second time around, moving one step closer to my ineluctable defeat. Things had gotten turned around so fast my head was spinning. It just wasn't fair.

"Dear Heart." Ivy repeated the endearment more fervently, ignoring my protest completely. "My Rachel, my little witch, my Dear Heart. What else should I call you but what you are?"

I jumped when I felt her hand move to cover mine, a wordless whimper of protest emitting from my throat when she gently tugged on the splat gun until I forfeited it. She carefully took it from me, placing it near my hip on the counter at my back.

"It's right here." She shushed me like a scared child when I whimpered in fear at being disarmed, taking my hand and guiding it to the useless bit of plastic. "Right here if you need it." Yeah, it was close at hand, only it might has well have been welded to the counter for all the good that did to me. For the life of me, I couldn't make myself pick it back up. Its track record against undead vamp was still a losing streak...

With the gun out of the way, Ivy closed the last of the distance between us, scooting closer until we were face to face, our breaths mingling and much of our bodies touching. She held my face in her hands, her thumbs caressing my cheeks and wiping away a few tired tears. Her gaze was pure, tender adoration, her eyes heavy-lidded and overflowing with desire; even if she hadn't held me, I would never have been able to look away.

"You're going to kiss me, aren't you?" I asked, sounding completely lost, as she brought her lips even closer to mine. My emotions were a mess, and even if, intellectually, I couldn't fathom wanting her, being honest with myself I couldn't deny how much I did. My survival instincts screamed at me to push her away, that a hopeless fight was better than surrender, but my heart, and libido, pretty much told them to go curl up in a corner and die; Ivy didn't look like she wanted to eat me (well, not in the literal way...), she looked like she wanted to fuck the first thing that moved senseless, and that... made feel like moving around. A lot.

"It crossed my mind." Ivy whispered her reply before lightly shutting her eyes. Her mouth was millimetres from mine and still closing. Briefly, she drew back a bit, but when I didn't protest further, she stopped tormenting me and brushed her lips lightly over mine. Just a short brush at first, then a longer one, and a longer one still, until her lips and mine joined for good.

A white-hot flash fried my brain for a second, and then it all washed away. The pain, the fear, the constant stress, the grief, they never stood a chance before this one tiny contact and the tidal wave of blissful relief it summoned. I eased into the kiss, my arms slinking around her neck to pull her closer, my mouth on hers becoming firmer, craving more of the velvet perfection of my vampire. Ivy took my hips in response, and our bodies melded together, hers wrapping mine in a delicate shroud of incense and warmth.

Just like me, Ivy could only be satisfied with a soft and shallow kiss for so long, and we both moaned when we deepened it, our lips parting and our tongues mutually intertwining. Ivy didn't try to dominate me further while we kissed, but she did steer my tongue away when it got too close to her sharp fangs for comfort.

"I missed you." I breathed out during one of the brief pauses Ivy gave me to catch my breath. "God, Ivy, I missed you so much."

Ivy didn't really need to reply, since I could feel her literally purring, like a kitten lapping up cream, against me where she held me close. She dipped her mouth in the hollow of my neck and nuzzled me there, her mouth moving slowly higher until it was at my ear. The vampire extended her long, dextrous tongue and flicked it at the sensitive flesh, right before she gently captured it between her lips. She suckled the earlobe for a few seconds, my breath hitching a little due to the delicious feeling her ministrations evoked. She kept it up until my ear was hot and red, and then husked three simple words into it, her voice rough with unabashed desire.

"I want you."

The declaration was accompanied by a firm press of her thigh between both of mine, the motion making me buck into her. Her hands bunched up in my shirt while I involuntarily ground myself against her, the seams protesting a bit against the rough treatment of the vampire. Before she decided the garment was too offensive to be allowed continued existence, I held up my arms and allowed her to pull it up over my head. Ivy paused for a moment to take me in after she discarded the shirt; the clothes I'd worn had been sort of sexy, in my usual confident-badass-witch-runner way, but the underwear I had on was more utilitarian than enticing. Looking at Ivy ogling me, though? One would have thought I'd worn her favourite lacy bra, or gotten a demon magic boob job or something. Her eyes went from milk chocolate to ninety-nine percent cocoa, the ring of brown of her pupils simply vanishing in the space between one beat of my pounding heart and the next.

The hand that had threatened to rip my shirt off just a second ago went straight to the small of my back, firm but not painfully so, while her other one slipped around the nape of my neck to guide my mouth back to hers. This kiss was very different from the first. There was no careful equity this time. Her mouth hungrily dominated mine, and I couldn't possibly be happier about it. Her tongue took the lead in my mouth as it danced with mine, and by the time she broke the kiss to take my hips, I was seeing spots. In her fervour, she'd sorta forgotten one of us still needed to breathe...

Effortlessly, Ivy hoisted me up and settled my leather-clad ass on the kitchen counter, the added height, and the fact she was barefoot, meaning I looked down at her. I really didn't feel any more in control because of it, perhaps due to the fact her mouth was now at juuuust the right height to comfortably reach my throat. I wasn't sure if it aroused or scared me...

The vampire looked up at me, a slight vertigo spinning me around as I gazed back into her impossibly deep eyes. "More?" She murmured throatily, and all I could do to acquiesce was to jerk my head up and down. It wasn't truly a nod; a nod suggests a controlled movement of the head, and control is something puddles of wanton need like Ivy was turning me into don't exactly have in troves... Strangely enough, despite my state of mind my scars were barely tingling, though I suppose after I accused her of trying to bespell me, she would try to keep things as down-to-earth as possible and avoid vamp tricks...

Her hands lightly ran up my body, from my hips to the side of my breasts, and with the ease of someone who had to do for herself most of her life, she unclasped my bra, sending it the way of my shirt. Sighing in content, Ivy nuzzled my now naked torso, her head nestling between my small breasts, encouraged by my hands gripping her liquid-smooth ebon hair.

"You smell so good." I managed to breathe out. The vampire seemed happy where she was and wasn't moving for now, perhaps trying to compose herself a little, and I took the opportunity to bury my nose in her hair. Her scent was sharper, more complex, more potent than ever before, and my lungs could not hold nearly enough air to satisfy my craving for it.

"You can't smell yourself mixing with me." Ivy rumbled, the soft vibration against my sensitive flesh, as well as the husked tone of her voice, making me shiver. "You have no idea what 'smelling good' means, Rachel. Absolutely no clue."

_So that's what she's doing rubbing against me down there..._ I thought ruefully. She was willingly mixing our scents and breathing them in, taking advantage of her new, sharper senses. Ivy pushed her nose harder into me, inhaled deeply once more, and then looked up at me, smiling devilishly.

"Oooo... God, Ivy!" I cried out her name when she darted snake-like to wrap her lips around my bare nipple. Delicately, she suckled it, making it stand stiff and erect, one of her hands coming to rest on my neglected breast to keep it company while her mouth was busy with its twin. The vampire rolled my nipple with her thumb as she fondled it, her tongue twirling about the other one while she sucked, and the twin sensations made me arch into her, desperate to push more of me into her mouth. She swapped mouth and hand a few times, lingering on my breasts until I felt about ready to explode with the need for more.

"Please..." I begged breathily, unsure what I wanted but knowing I would pretty much die if she didn't give it to me NOW! My leather pants, which I simply loved any other day, felt so obtrusive, and my panties... let's just say they were getting awfully uncomfortable.

With a knowing look and a matching smirk, Ivy pulled her mouth away, giving me one last lingering lick on each breast. She pulled me down for a quick kiss, letting me take the lead this time though her tongue still shielded mine from the sharp edges of her fangs. Her fingers traced the hem of my low-cut leather pants, from the small of my back to the front of them, before dipping past it and popping the button. Her steady hands slowly worked the fly down, making sure to press a little more than necessary against that most sensitive area just behind it. Bracing against her shoulders, I lifted my ass off the counter, allowing her to tug my pants down my well-toned legs. Ivy took a second more to remove my socks and stroke my calves with a very appreciative look, then she pressed herself against me once more, with the wonderful improvement that she was now cupping me through the damp material of my panties.

"Is this better, my little witch?" Ivy asked in a smoky voice as she stroked my pulsing need, her eyes riveted to mine. Her only answer was a wordless warble emitted from my throat and a tug on her hair that brought her face closer to mine. Almost overwhelmed by the sensation of her strong hand on me, I pressed my forehead to hers, the simple task of breathing and not passing out turning into a feat of will as my breath started whooshing in and out, quick and shallow. Calming it was simply impossible with Ivy's hand where it was; all I could do was hold on and hope she wouldn't tease me to death. My hips bucked against her palm, but the vampire was dead set on doing things at her own pace. Unlike mine, Ivy's breathing was incredibly deep and regular, her nostrils flaring every time she inhaled the scent of my arousal mixed with hers. Even though she was the one pleasuring me, she was more vocal than I was, a steady stream of soft and not so soft cries and moans erupting from her throat as my pleasure slowly rose. Hearing her like this, it wasn't long before I started getting close...

I gasped sharply when she abruptly lowered herself to her knees, as if reacting to my impending climax. Her fingers on me hadn't missed a beat, but all of a sudden, her beautiful face no longer filled my field of vision. Glancing down, I found her staring at the motion of her skilful digits on my core, her lips parted and her chest moving rapidly up and down; she was actually panting. She wanted me so much that despite her lack of biological need for breath, she was actually panting.

Sensing me watching her, Ivy glanced up, an eager smile laden with meaning that made me blush like crazy on her lips. Blame it on the fried brain from earlier, but I hadn't immediately understood that she was about to go down on me. The realisation made a fresh rush of moisture soak my undergarments; I nearly came undone just from the thought of her tongue and lips and teeth on me doing...

Guh...

"You'll love it. Scout's honour." Ivy promised huskily in answer to my unvoiced query. Using the hand that wasn't busy holding me over the edge, she caressed my leg from ankle to thigh before she pushed my limb up the counter until it was parallel to it, the inside of my thigh clearly in sight. With her fingers still tracing a maddening little circle on my clit through my underwear, she began to pepper soft, lingering kisses on my exposed flesh, the languorous contact of her lips on me wracking my body with anticipation. Leisurely, she moved closer and closer to the spot where I desperately needed her mouth to be, the sounds I made becoming more and more frantic as she slowed her pace even further and began to linger at a particular place in my groin. She went from kissing to nuzzling, rubbing the tip of her nose against that one spot she seemed to like a lot, which made my face scrunch up in confusion and frustration.

_Goddamnit, Ivy, get busy-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y..._ I whined inwardly but kept it to myself, knowing that if I complained she would probably draw the torment out even longer. Damn vamp hadn't even made a move to take my panties off yet; at that point I didn't care if she ripped them off, as long as they fucking CAME OFF!

... which they didn't actually need to, considering what Ivy had in mind was clearly not oral sex, or at least not the variety involving her mouth being used to stimulate my sex.

Her lips froze against me, a soft, pleased sound emerging from deep in her throat. Her tongue flicked light over my skin once, and then her lips parted. She eagerly sucked on it, always in the same spot, for several seconds, the sensation pleasant but falling way short of what I needed right about now.

That's when the fangs came out.

Ivy's mouth slowly gaped open wide, so wide it almost looked like she unhinged her jaw, over the spot she had been tenderly adoring for the past minute or so. Where her small sharpened canine had been, there now sprouted, her viciously pointed fangs. Four in total, the lower ones shorter than the upper ones almost half as long as my pinkie, they were the colour of polished ivory, and positively gleaming with saliva.

In a flash, I regained some measure of clarity, the realisation that I had reached third base with a hungry undead vampire in my kitchen like a wash of cold water. A spike of ice-cold fear drove itself through my gut... right along with one of pure, white-hot desire. I couldn't deny I craved her bite like a man dying of thirst craves water, but the knowledge that Ivy wanted me wholly for herself put a dent in my willingness to give in to that desire. She could take my will away with that bite, swallow it right along with my blood, and I would let it go begging for more if I let her.

"Ivy, w-wait. Wait!" I cried out, the pitch of my voice higher than I would have liked, but it got the job done. Ivy froze, the tips of her fangs digging just a little in my skin. For the first time, her right hand moving against my center missed a beat. She made no move to pull her mouth back, but her eyes fluttered open and sought out mine interrogatively. "Just wait." I panted, unable to ask her to stop rubbing me, which she didn't. In fact, she pushed my panties to the side and for the first time touched my aching need directly, probably trying to nudge me into giving her the go-ahead to sink her fangs in. That was just mean. How the hell was I supposed to convince her not to bite me when I was quivering from head to toe with my need for her?

_Shit, she'll think I'm jerking her around..._ She couldn't have this. I wanted the sex part, desperately so, but I couldn't give her my blood. Trouble was, Ivy was looking less and less accommodating as the seconds passed. I wasn't sure she would take no for an answer anymore.

Since I didn't add anything more straight away, and she was in far too tempting a position, Ivy let go of my leg and withdrew her mouth, as well as her hand stroking me, much to my chagrin. Her arms wrapped around my back and she forcefully buried her face in my naked midriff. I could feel her finger crook into claws, but only her fingertips buried in my flesh. It hurt, and I would likely have a few extra bruises in the morning, but she didn't scratch me. The quiet plaintive mewling coming told me it wasn't a desire to cause me pain that made her do that, but rather her struggling for control. She had started unchaining her bloodlust, and now because of me she had to shove it back in its cage without even sating it. Her frustration had to be reaching critical mass...

_It... it was a mistake to even go this far. I shouldn't have sex with her. It's too dangerous for me, and unfair for her._ I know it sounds stupid to be agonising over her needs, but I owed Ivy that much. I needed to get away from her, somewhere out of her reach where I could wait out the rest of night. The church was a lot of things, but sun-proof wasn't one of them. If I could make it to holy ground, I would be safe; scared as hell of her reprisal and sexually frustrated enough to burn out even a top-of-the-line vibrator, but safe.

"What?" Ivy whimpered, still holding me like a drowning man. My thoughts scrambled for an excuse to get her to let me go, or some subterfuge to lure her to the hallway...

"Take me to bed, Ivy." I asked her in a trembling voice, hoping she would be too lust-addled to remember our rooms were sanctified long enough for me to make a dash for it. "Didn't you say you wanted our first time to be in a bed, without rush?" I reminded her of what she had declared when we took that shower together, a few hours before her death.

Unfortunately for me, Ivy didn't reply. She stayed still for a few seconds, as if she were pondering her next course of action, but instead of pulling away like I hoped, she began to nuzzle and kiss my abdomen. Her hand touched my knee, and once more, she lifted my leg, still intent on sinking her fangs into me before the night was out.

"Ivy!" I gasped. "Come on, did you really hunt me for over a year just to settle for a quickie in the kitchen? You're still completely clothed, for crying out loud."

"Rachel." Ivy rasped. "Honey, don't you remember that our bedrooms are both sanctified? If I try to enter your room, I'll burn to a crisp."

"You... you would? I thought..." I thought vamps were like demons in this regard; unable to step on holy ground but not strictly harmed by it.

_Holy shit... no pun intended, but if that had worked..._ I didn't want to think about that. She had already died protecting me, and now I had devised, however briefly and half-assed, a plot that might have ended with her burning (sorta) alive. Way to repay her...

"You don't want that, do you?" Ivy asked, her voice taking on a venomous sweetness. Glancing down, I found out she was eyeing me warily. _Oh, crap on toast. She can smell my guilt..._ "Unless of course that was the plan, and I just didn't take the bait."

"Ivy, I- AH!" I tried to explain myself, but she didn't give me a chance. In the blink of an eye, she righted herself, her eerie, unblinking eyes staring hard into mine. I cried out in surprise, but not solely because of how blindingly fast she moved; fast and hard, she had pushed the material of my panties aside and shoved two fingers inside of me. It should have hurt, but I was so wet and the thrust had been so smooth and skilful, there was more than a little pleasure mixing with the surprise in the cry that erupted from my mouth.

"Do you feel that?" Ivy asked me harshly. "I would say you feel a little frisky... but someone more foul-mouthed might use another word. You're absolutely soaked, Dear Heart. Do you have any idea how much vamp pheromones it would take to get you this worked up? Here's a hint; _a lot_ more than I'm putting out right now."

"F-fuck, s-stop it!" I stuttered, reaching for her hand, but before I could grab it, she pulled her fingers out, my traitorous inner muscles gripping her digits tight as she did. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me is that I've given you NO reason not to trust me tonight, and yet you keep accusing me of trying to influence you unfairly!" Ivy shouted right back at me, unrepentant and in my opinion more than a little self-righteous. "You see this?" She brought her hand to my face, the fingers she put in me still sticky and glistening with my desire for her. "If this was my pheromone's doing, your scar would be throbbing so bad you'd come just from the weight of my eyes on your neck. Tell me, is it even tingling? Because I feel no pull from it whatsoever!"

"That's not why I wanted you to stop!" I yelled and pushed her, giving myself some room to stand up and get in her face. God, I had to look so-o-o-o intimidating, naked as I was except for my soaked underwear... "I didn't think you were bespelling me, I needed you to stop because you were about to bite me!"

That stopped her dead in her track. She just stood there, blinking at me, her mouth slightly agape, dumbstruck.

"That's why you stopped me?" She finally asked. "You're afraid of my bite?"

"Yeah, I am!" I huffed. Naked. Sweating. Soaked. And trying to keep the moral high ground. I love my life. "God, Ivy, is that so mind-boggling? I'm not exactly sure about you anymore."

"... And yet you still want sex with me." Ivy mused even though tonight had mostly been her idea so far, her eyes studying me intently.

"I want safe sex." I finally admitted, some of my outrage deflating out of me. "I know this is stupid. I know I'll regret this in the morning, Ivy. I know sleeping with you is a mistake, but I can't help it." My desire was getting too glaring to deny any longer. I had to own up to it if I wanted to get it out of my system.

I stepped up to Ivy, the beautiful vampire still waiting to see what I would do next, and gripped her hand, placing them on my hips. Not quite bursting with confidence, I looked her in the eye.

"Promise you won't bite?" I asked her. Ivy's answering nod was a little curt, but she agreed anyway. "This is a one-time deal only, Ivy." I warned her as she tugged me closer. "I'm not agreeing to anything else."

"Is the couch okay?" Ivy asked me as if she never heard my warning.

"I mean it. I won't join you. This is strictly sex, nothing more."

"Keep telling yourself that, Dear Heart. I'm sure you'll convince yourself eventually." Ivy murmured ominously, and guided me towards the living room, intent on savouring the one chance I gave her to have sex with me. Honestly, I felt too lustful to counter her, and by the time we were both writhing on the couch, lost in mutual enjoyment, her last words slipped from my mind.

It was the sun glaring beyond my eyelids that woke me up the next morning, naked as the day I was born and cuddling an incense-scented pillow to my chest. I was lying on the living room's grey suede couch, my body wrapped in a soft blanket deliciously sore, heavy and quite unwilling to move. Once I had her promise, and the two of us saw eye to eye, the one-night stand with Ivy had turned into an exquisite experience that the vampire had drawn out long past the endurance I thought I was capable of. As awareness came back to me, I realised that of my vampire lover, there was not a trace save for a delicately penned letter resting near my head.

"Dear Heart," the letter read, "I'm sorry that you couldn't find me by your side when you woke up this morning. The intolerance to sunlight truly is the one true curse of my condition. I hope you're feeling better now than you were earlier. It pained me to see you in such poor health."

"No doubt you will notice that Erica is absent from the church. There is no need for you to be alarmed; my dear little sister was in dire need of some sister time, and I have whisked her away for the day. She will come back in a few hours, hopefully in a better shape than the one she was in this morning. She is a wreck, as is to be expected, but I know she will pull through."

"I've thought long and hard about what you said, how what happened between us last night was strictly physical and not emotional, and I've come to one, unshakeable conclusion; I totally refuse your offer. I won't let death tear us apart, Rachel, not without a fight. I must implore you not to shut me out once more. Let us talk about it this time. I'm sure I can ease your worries, and then we can find our balance once more. I want to make you happy, Dear Heart."

"Love, Ivy."

"P.S.: I hope you can forgive me for the mark on your neck. I know I promised, but I couldn't resist leaving without giving you a little souvenir of our night together."

All the thoughts in my mind went down the drain as I read the post-scriptum. Panicked, I focus on my neck, finding a large, sore spot right over my jugular. In a daze, I stumbled naked out of the living room and ran into my bathroom. My reflection in the mirror showed me the biggest, most glaring, most tacky...

... hickey you've ever seen.

"That bitch..." I laughed in relief, finding another note on my mirror, one that simply read ':-P'.

Then I realised how just how fond I felt towards the perpetrator of the joke, and a feeling of cold dread took root in the pit of my stomach...


	21. Chapter 20

_A/N: Sorry for the long hiatus. I had originally planned to wrap this story up before posting any more, but I had a bit of an outline failure, so I had to scap a fair chunk of text and go back to the drawing board to revise it. I'm going to try and put this story on the fast track now that I've got my new and improved outline AND a schedule that provides time to write, but I'm still a full-time student, so I can't make any promises_

Chapter 20

_How the hell can a girl's closet be filled solely with clothes she doesn't like...?_ I muttered mentally as I rummaged through the contents of my closet, tossing shirts, shoes and skirts about in search of what felt like the Holy fucking Grail. I'd been at it for a good fifteen minutes, and the passage of hurricane Morgan showed. Most everything I owned in terms of apparel I had clutched, observed, judged and promptly discarded after a few seconds, judging the article inappropriate for the grim circumstances ahead. Seth's funeral was tonight, and I was in desperate need of something that said "supporting a friend in mourning", and not, as all I had strewn around seemed to, "cheap call girl escort".

_Seriously, where did all my tasteful clothes go?_ I wondered as I tossed the short (read; mini)skirt I had been observing with a critical eye. _It's like I never expected to do anything with my life other than partying, working out, having sex and running..._ Leather, lace, silk, spandex, Lycra, those abounded. A dress fit for a social event? A pair of dress slacks? Heels not of the "fuck-me" variety? Nope, none and nada.

"What about that outfit Kist put together for you on your first date?" Ivy piped into my angry ruminations, her voice coming through the tiny speaker pressed against my ear betraying a hint of mirth. "That one looked good. I'd even go as far as saying you looked classy in it." The vampire was in a funny mood this afternoon, as in, she felt like making fun of me and my antics. I'd called her for help, seeing as she had the best fashion sense of everyone I knew and knew the content of my closet like she bought it herself, but so far I'd just gotten a crick in my neck from holding my cell against my ear with my shoulder, and a temper flare from her playful "advice". She'd done little but remind me of every article of clothing I'd ever owned appropriate for wearing tonight... and then reminiscing how it had met a shredded, singed, clawed, perforated, stained beyond washing or otherwise magical end over the past two years I'd been an independent runner.

_That's what you get for waking her up... _I thought with a glance at the sunlight streaming into my room through my window. It was a lovely, cloudless spring day outside, with the sun out in full force, which meant she had to be somewhere underground at this hour...

"You know, I don't recall asking to be your comedic relief, Ivy. You're no help at all. I should've saved myself the trouble and asked Jenks..." I growled at her, then sighed as I stared at the now bare wall of my closet and slumped on my bed, burying my face in my free hand as I pictured the clothes in question. She did have a point; that outfit would have worked, but... "I'd have to ring up Trent and ask if he hasn't burned it yet. Even if he hasn't, with the way he's been avoiding me, I'm sure I'd just put it right back on his 'to do' list." My last meeting with Trent had been... eventful, to say the least. If not for Ivy, it would have ended with him painting a headstone in our backyard red with witch blood. My witch blood. The outfit Ivy had mentioned had been left in his complex during one rather trying evening involving a boat, a bomb and a buttload of bitches and bastards, and in all the commotion, I'd left the clothes I'd intended to wear in Trent's possession. Whether he'd tossed them out or kept them and built a creepy stalker shrine to me out of them was anyone's guess; seeing as Ellasbeth, his then fiancé, might've gotten her cold hands on them, I doubted the silk pants and neat sweater had survived...

"Sorry." Ivy yawned without a hint of sincerity, apologising for her needling without meaning it having become a sort of habit for her, one I was slowly getting used to, along with her every other little change, over the last week.

"Yeah, right. You're about as sorry for all this as you were for that hickey." I spoke reproachfully, my hand unconsciously touching the spot Ivy had "marked". It had just finished fading yesterday, for crying out loud. Baffling how I could have slept through that. Damn vamp and her pheromones...

"Oh, for the love of blood, can I _ever_ hope for your forgiveness?" Ivy drawled, all but laughing at me now. I swear, ever since she came back you couldn't squeeze a drop of guilt out of her with a car crusher...

"Think Jenks will ever let me live that one down?" I drawled right back. "There's your answer." To be truthful, the pixy wasn't exactly teasing me about the hickey. Persecuting me was more like it. "Now stop making fun of me and help me out, would you? The funeral's tonight, and I've got nothing to wear."

"Stop making fun of you?" Ivy drawled whiningly. "Rachel, in case you haven't noticed, it's two-thirty in the afternoon. I happen to sleep during the day, you know. I think you can bear with my glibness for a few minutes, no?"

"You don't even _need_ to sleep at all! It's not like I cut your beauty sleep short! Besides, I thought you barely had any time to yourself. What are you doing in bed in the first place?"

"Things quieted down a bit in the past few days. I think Trent actually patted himself on the back about it in his latest speech. He even let the IS and FIB share the spotlight for all of three seconds." She replied distractedly, the sound of shuffling covers and the pounding of pillows coming through the speaker. It sounded like she was getting comfy, meaning she didn't intend to put a stop to the Itchy and Scratchy... I mean, Rachel and Ivy show anytime soon. Great. "Today was actually the first occasion I had to shut my eyes in the past month. I think that makes me doubly entitled to annoying you, doesn't it?"

"You would be if you actually had a solution to offer in return for the annoyance." I shot back. "I'm starting to think you don't. Knock. It. Off."

"You offer me no more blood, no more nookie, which is especially cruel by the way because you were great our first time, you decline my invitation to dinner, and now you won't let me poke fun of you after you woke me up in the middle of the day?" Ivy clucked her tongue disapprovingly. "You're such a taskmaster to your humble servant, Dear Heart. Don't get me wrong, I like that you pick up when I call these days, but I can't live _d'amour et d'eau fraiche_ alone. I need a little something to tide me over at least."

"Ivy..." I sighed, not wanting to think too hard about the gross inequities I'd forced the vampire into. We hadn't done much more than talk (a lot) on the phone since our night together. Needless to say she wanted less talking and more activities involving no clothes whatsoever. "We were talking about clothes, weren't we?"

"I know, I know, 'one step at a time', 'let's take it slow', 'I'll come to you when I'm ready' and all that jazz. Back to the doghouse with us, my wounded heart, scrounging up clothes fit for a funeral is the only thing I'm good for." Ivy grumpily dropped the uncomfortable subject, to my relief. Now, if she could just stop with the drama queen act... The woman was immortal now, and according to my demon teacher, I pretty much was too; it's not like we couldn't afford the time to let me get used to the idea of being with an undead vamp... "Well, the sun's up, and I won't have time to take you shopping between the moment it goes down and the beginning of the service..."

Okay, bring the drama queen act back, please...

"Hey! I can shop for myself if it comes to that!" I protested vehemently, making the vampire snort in a most un-ladylike fashion. "You might be a sharper dresser than me, but I'm not completely incompetent..."

"Rachel, I've got two words for you; cherry buttons." _Why am I not surprised she's making fun of me again? _I wondered silently, blushing despite myself in embarrassment. _For someone with such great hearing, she sure never listens..._ "And that was for a marriage rehearsal. Letting you shop on your own on such short notice, and for a funeral no less, would be considered criminal negligence."

"That was one time! One time!" I cried out. Only unconvinced, mocking silence answered me, so complete I could hear her eyebrow arch. "Well, you don't have time to accompany me anyway. With your completely anal shopping habits, you'd end up in an emergency sunlight shelter even if we had from sundown to sunrise! We'd never get done! So there!" I paused for a second to catch my breath. "And I can't believe you made me say 'so there'..." I added quietly. Ivy wasn't responding, or so I thought for a second before her laughter became loud enough for me to make it out clearly. It had that honest, unguarded quality about it that I'd always loved; sue me, but I loved the sound her laughing, and I had for the longest time. I couldn't help but join her.

"Oh God, Rachel, you really are priceless." Ivy spoke breathlessly, her voice breaking out in short fits of giggles even after the brunt of her hilarity had passed.

"Yeah, I'm a regular comedian. Sometimes I even want to be." I chuckled self-derisively.

"Oh, don't be too hard on yourself." Ivy said with easy fondness that let butterflies loose in my insides. "As I was about to say before you took offence to the truth, getting new clothes is out. However, I think you can find something suitable in my closet."

"Huh? Hum, Ivy, I'm sure you've got quite the selection of appropriate clothes, what with your monochrome fashion sense," she replied to that in a mature and composed fashion, by blowing a raspberry at me, "but you're what, half a head taller than me? Most of that in legs? I don't think your stuff will fit me." Not to mention that willowy frame of hers... I'd lost some weight in the past few weeks, but Ivy was still more slender than I was. I was broader across the shoulders too, not to mention my sad excuse for a chest and her, hum... no, there was no way anything that fit her well would look good on me.

"I'm not offering you some of my clothes, doorknob, I'm offering you some of yours." Ivy replied playfully. "That ensemble I gave you when we met Nathalie was not the only one of its kind, you know. I got you a few different things. You should find what you need in there. There's no underwear, though." She added cheekily after a short pause. "Don't forget to bring your own, please? I'm the first one surprised, but I'd rather like to go through the night without having thoughts of ravishing you."

"Huh." I said dumbly, wondering how I hadn't thought of that. Ivy had said she had a stash of clothes in my size before we met with the evil bitch... "You couldn't say that earlier and save me a whole lot of irritation?"

"And miss all the fun we just had?" The vampire laughed. At me. Again.

"I thought you wanted to sleep?" I pointed out peevishly, a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth despite my best efforts.

"Well, it's not like I _need_ to..."

"Right."

"You sounded stressed out." She admitted after a short pause, her voice softer than it had been since I rang her up. "I thought I'd take your mind off it for a while."

"You've got a funny way of cheering me up, Fang Girl." I chuckled. "You know, poking fun at someone until they foam at the mouth is generally not an accepted way to accomplish that..."

"Maybe not for all people." The vampire admitted with a hot, smoky smile in her voice. It sounded like she had some other kind of cheering in mind now. Goody. "However, not taking yourself too seriously is one of the many things I love about you."

"Many things you like, hmm?" I smiled, my heart picking up a bit at Ivy's tone. The deep, wonderful intricacies of her voice weren't done justice on the phone, but still loved hearing her talk, even without the strange caressing vampy effects she could have on me in person. "Tell me about it. What do you like about me?"

"I don't recall saying I 'liked' anything about you, Dear Heart." Ivy chuckled, dialling her sensuous grey silk voice to eleven. My heart started doing jumping Jacks right around my throat in response. Flashes of our night together danced before my eyes; my hands entangled in her dark locks, her soft skin against mine, her long fingers running all over me, her softer lips hitting all the right spots and more... just the sound of her voice was enough to make me wonder why the hell Ivy was alone in bed right this second. I flushed instantly, my blood summoned by the sound to the surface of my skin in an instant, as if it were eager to jump from my body to her mouth, even without her present.

"Didn't you?" I asked faintly, unable to push more air out of my lungs. All of my brain power seemed to have become dedicated to the enjoyment of everything Ivy Tamwood, even though the vampire was probably miles away. I had none left for fancy words and stuff. Could've been worse though. I could have moaned in response...

"No, Rachel, I didn't." She breathed, making my name sound like the eighth wonder of the world, the holiest of relics and the kinkiest of sex acts at the same time. "I said 'love'. 'Like' would be selling you so short, my little witch. I love so many, many things about you. I love your spirit, your spontaneity, I love the way you complete me so well, but you knew that already. It's all boring old news now. How fortunate that I've found so many new things to love about you since we made love, though. "

I didn't think Ivy's grey silk vampy voice meter went to twelve. Apparently, it did. "What things?" I moaned, craving the sound like a brimstone addict in withdrawal.

"The feel of your hair beneath my fingers. My god, Rachel, ever since I touched it, how you can hate it defies my understanding. If it wasn't for your skin, I could spend eternity stroking it. What skin you have..." Ivy moaned, making me melt just a little bit more. "So pristine everywhere, so soft and supple. It's almost as kissable as your lips. Almost. They still top everything off, though. What I wouldn't give for a kiss from you, to feel those lips against my own again, that tongue against mine again, to feel you nuzzling my throat or kissing your way down to my breasts..."

_You do have lovely little breasts_... I no longer surprised myself thinking so fondly of her firm globes of flesh and their taut little peaks. A little over a month ago, I was convinced I only liked (sorta) having breasts myself; now I knew I they were great fun on my sex partners too. Slipping into bisexuality had been... surprisingly easy and natural once Ivy had thrown that door open for good. It was a whole new world to explore, even if my interest in other girls mostly limited itself to a particular one so far. I knew what sex with girls was like now, and that knowledge washed away all the doubts I'd had about myself; I saw no more need to make excuses for wanting it than I did when I thought of sex with guys. I think being forced to accept I wasn't a witch but something closer to a demon had something to do with that ease; after life threw me that curve ball, liking boobs didn't seem like such a big deal. Wanting a girl wasn't a problem anymore, but I can't stress enough that that wasn't the reason why I wasn't in bed with her right now; wanting an undead vamp was... not that you would have guessed it was by the incredibly worked up state the sound of Ivy's voice got me in...

_Does anyone want my soul? Seriously, I'll give you my soul if you can just get me in her bedroom right this second. You don't even have to take my clothes there with me._ I thought to no one in particular. If my IQ had still been in the double digits, I might have been grateful I was having those thoughts on holy ground and during the daytime. I wanted it so badly I wouldn't have been surprised if Al or some other demon had taken me up on that otherwise.

"That's just what I can touch, what I feel on the surface." Ivy rasped so huskily I could almost hear the blackness in her eyes. "God, you wouldn't believe how it feels to tune all my senses to you, to send them as deep as they can go. I thought they were sharp before, but..." Ivy's breath left her erratically, much like mine did. "You have no idea what it's like to lay on top of you, with your very life beating beneath me. It's like music, Rachel, like a glorious symphony. Your heartbeat, the sound of your panting breaths, of our skins sliding together... And your scent... my God, your scent is so heady, like the richest of red wines. Your sweat mixing with mine, your arousal mixing with mine... it felt like heaven, Dear Heart."

Ivy's following moan broke the bloody dial right about then. And my brain. Who cares? It's not like I was getting much mileage out of it anyway.

"Are you still with me, Honey?" Ivy asked sweetly, toning down her vampire sensuality a bit when she heard me hyperventilating. "You sound a bit winded."

"Huh-huh." I panted, my head spinning, distantly wondering when I'd lost all muscle tone in my back and collapsed on my bed; I had no recall of it at all, even though I'd been staring at the ceiling fan for a while. I had to blink several times just to clear my head enough to process her question. "Wouldn't have this been a better way to distract me, if that was really your intention?" I asked feebly, not even trying to hide the effect her voice had on me. I had to clutch my sheets with my free hand to resist the nearly overbearing, aching temptation to touch myself throbbing in my loins.

"Rachel, if you wanted phone sex, you should have asked for phone sex, not dressing advice." Ivy chastised me light-heartedly. "Should I keep going? I was just about to get to... taste, after all. Remember all I've tasted that night?" She trailed off in a smoky voice, making a loud, frustrated groan escape my throat. Ivy was nothing short of an artist with her tongue, and recalling what she had done to me with it made that feeling I described almost impossible to resist. I was just about to give in and pop the button on my jeans, all the better to shove my hand into my panties, when someone rang at the front door...

"Oh, Turn it..." I swore, the compromising position I was in just now hitting me since I'd completely forgotten my engagements for the morning. "Gotta be Ceri. Whose genius idea was it to invite her to brunch this afternoon?"

"Hmm, that would have been... yours?" Ivy's voice, back to its normal smoothness, shook a bit with her barely contained laughter.

"Why did she have to be on time?" I whined, standing upright, albeit shakily, to listen to the sounds coming from the hallway. Nothing, but I knew if it was Ceri, she had only rang as a courtesy; she'd left herself in, knowing that, under normal circumstances, she was more than welcome to. "Whatever happened to fashionably late?"

"I think Ceri is too sweet for that. Sorry, Dear Heart. Looks like we'll have to finish this some other time..." I sneered at her mocking tone, making her giggle. "If it makes you feel any better, there's no way I'm going back to sleep now."

"Yeah, well you've got a whole harem of people who are just dying to scratch _your_ itch, I'm sure." Ivy made a pensive sound in reply, obviously just to stoke a bit of jealousy in me. She had quite a few people at her service these days, and as their master, well, vampire customs dictated she got her pick out of them if she wanted someone in her bed. She claimed she hadn't used her privileges so far, though; she had fed of course, since taking blood was now a biological imperative for her, but she said she was reserving that part of herself for me. Considering her appetites, it was quite a concession for the vampire to remain exclusive to me despite my cock-blocking.

"Nah..." Ivy finally said dismissively, her covers shuffling again; it sounded like she was getting out of bed this time. "I feel like tying up a sexy little redheaded witch to my bed and having my way with her all afternoon. Sex with another vamp would feel a little bland in comparison." I couldn't help but scoff at that. Sex with a vamp could be a lot of things, but in my experience bland had never been one of them. "Really, I'll be fine. Sexual limbo's not a state I'm unfamiliar with after all..." She poked at me, reminding me of all the frustration I'd put her through in the years we'd known each other, when she pined after me and I did my best to ignore it.

"Now who's being vindictive..." I muttered as I risked a peek outside. The hallway was clear, at least. Maybe I could duck into the shower and pretend I'd been naked when Ceri came in... "I've got to go. I'll see you tonight?" I asked, still feeling a little ambivalent about t the prospect of seeing her face to face again. I mean, you saw what her voice could do to me; now add a perfectly honed seductive body language, loving and lovely almond-shaped eyes, pheromones, associated vampire powers to that. See what I would be up against? Yeah. Ivy could wrap me around her little finger with ridiculous ease if she wanted to.

"Yes. Erica told you where the ceremony is?" Ivy asked, the sound of drawers being slid open and close coming through along with her voice. I made a vague affirmative sound and decided to make a run for it, plunging silently into my bathroom. I began pouring myself a shower, adjusting the temperature to be much colder than what I liked, out of obvious necessity. "And the reception afterwards?"

"Uh, that she didn't mention." I answered distractedly as I checked the water's temperature, my skin drawing tight and breaking out in goosebumps from the cold. _Oh, this is going to be great..._ "Where's it at?"

"Oh. Well, it's... at my mom's." Ivy announced a bit hesitatingly, snapping my attention back to her. "Seth's parents aligned themselves with her, so it's kind of her duty to host everything."

"Huh, your mom? As in, the one who's so pissed at you you're kind of at war right now? That mom?"

"The very same."

"AND you're going to be there too?" I asked a little worriedly, and got a vague 'huh-uh' for an answer. "Oh, I guess there's no way this is going to turn into a clusterfuck, then. And I was all worried about my wardrobe... I'll just have to ring Glenn up, ask if I can borrow some riot response gear in black from the FIB, that'll work fine. I'll have all the appropriate accessories on hand to split you guys up..."

"Rachel, it's not going to be like that..." Ivy sighed a bit defensively. "I'm not going to barge in uninvited... or guns blazing. We've got a truce."

"And does that truce cover nasty words, or does it stop at trivial things like disembowelments? Because Erica's night is going to be bad enough as it is. She doesn't need you two gutting each other verbally."

"I'll be civil as long as she is, promised." Ivy muttered glumly under her breath.

"Not good enough." I replied, hammering each word. "Promise me you'll be the bigger woman, Ivy. If, no, when there's friction, just walk away, just this once. You shouldn't care if you take a political hit." I anticipated her objection, hoping to shame her into promising me. I know, undead and shame and all that... give me a sec, I'll stop ignoring the elephant in the room.

"I can't believe _you_ are asking _me_ to do that..." Ivy tried to deflect. "Whatever happened to you being the fiery impulsive one and me being the temperate planner?"

"Oh, I'm definitely the dumber one when it comes to everything else, but mother-daughter relationships? Nuh-uh. I've got you beat by a freaking mile. Promise for Erica? Please?"

"All right, fine. I promise I'll be on my best behaviour with mommy dearest, even when she decides to chew me up again. God, Rachel..." She muttered my name under her breath, sounding vaguely exasperated.

"What's that? Did you say something?" I asked coyly, smiling with satisfaction when she didn't answer the rebuttal further. "I didn't think so." I shut off the shower, this episode having been enough to cool me down. I might get a sideways look from Jenks from the way I smelled, but Ceri should be none the wiser. It's not like Jenks ever looked at me any other way these days... "Later?" I asked the now-silent vamp.

"Yes, later." Ivy answered. "Rachel?" She added before I could disconnect her. "I love you." She declared with earnest simplicity, making me freeze in a maelstrom of emotion. Sure, maybe she'd said that just to get the last word in, but it was damned effective. Flirting be damned, I couldn't answer that, not to her face, not yet. There was a faint click I barely heard, Ivy having decided she wasn't going to wait around for an answer, yet my hand kept pressing the cell phone against my ear, quivering almost imperceptibly.

"I love you too." I barely breathed out into the inert phone, as if letting anyone hear me say those words would spell doom for all I ever held dear. I closed the cell, leaned against the bathroom wall, took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly.

So, huh... Yeah, Ivy and I? Talking once more. Talking a lot actually, pretty much every day since what I'd come to call "our night". It hadn't even been a conscious decision to let her into my life again; she rang me up about a week prior, after a long healing session with Ceri that left me exhausted both physically and emotionally, and distracted as I was, I forgot to check the number like I'd done every time the phone rang in the past month. Before I could even blink or realise what I'd done, Ivy had me floating on a grey silk cloud of verbal comfort. She had called just to talk, and frankly, "just talking" felt almost as rejuvenating as the truckload of pheromones she pumped into me while we had sex. Sleeping with her had been great, but spending two hours just talking, without getting scared out of my mind, had made me feel like I got my best friend back. Frankly, I'd missed her that way a lot more than... well, _THAT_ way. You know what I mean, you don't need me to waggle my eyebrows lecherously to spell it out...

So, Ivy and I were doing good, considering she died her first death a month earlier. I still had my reservations about her being an undead vampire, but the more I tried my hand at it, the more I found it might not be nearly as bad as I expected. I was starting to wonder if their reputation was due to the fact we really only ever heard about the catastrophic undead-living relationships. I mean, that makes at least a lick of sense, right? If every undead vamp was a psychotic monster just waiting until our collective backs were turned to break free from every rule of society, the rest of Inderland would have banded together to wipe them out, right? The world's vampire population is over a quarter of a billion, with around fifteen percent of those undead; that's a whole lot of monsters out there, and yet the public only heard on average one or two horror stories a year. No one is that good at cleaning up after themselves. If all undead are as bad as, say, Piscary, then where are the bodies? The victims that got away? The witnesses? Some vamps had to be worst than others, and those had to be the ones giving them all a bad name. Most relationships with them had to be successful somehow, and Ivy was a perfectly stable and adjusted undead now, as oxymoronic as that sounds, even to me. Her trouble and control issues were gone now, she was happier than ever and she wanted us to be together. Honestly, I'd been with her one night, and it hadn't been anything even remotely close to bad. In fact it had been pretty freaking great, just to lay on the couch with her between two bouts of lovemaking, skin to skin, feeling the tender weight of her gaze on me as I dozed in and out of consciousness, using her chest as a pillow. If there was a chance for us to work, it had to be worth a try, right?

So, I had my best friend and lover back, thanks to Ceri I was back at full magical strength (hence the invitation to brunch this afternoon, as a thank you of sorts), I was slowly getting used to the damage left from the vampire venom Nathalie pumped into me (that one might be a bit of a lie, I still got nauseous at sunrise every third day, and even when it was overcast I had to wear sunglasses outside, but at least I could anticipate my body's every lovely reaction to sunlight; that's kinda like getting used to it, right?) and my hometown was slowly getting back to normal, minus a lot of nasty elements that made my life hell once upon a time. Life's perfect, right? Well, it would at least be a lot brighter if my new roommate hadn't lost the love of her life a week prior. Saying that Erica was a complete wreck would be an understatement. I'd lost lovers before, twice in fact, and I thought I'd been gutted by it, but goddamn, I was getting schooled in pain and grief by the young vampire. Her spirits were in tatters. She'd pretty much spent all week either locked in Ivy's old room or in the garden with the pixies; Jenks and Matalina, despite the fact they were both her age, had welcomed the teenager as one of their daughters, and the whole brood had been quicker than thought to follow. As much as they looked like cute little angels, all of them had dealt with loss over and over again over the years before they moved into the church with Ivy and me. Pixy life is brutal, I tell you...

The words "politically arranged marriage" don't usually bring to mind the love of the ages, and neither does "teenage romance", but I guess Seth and Erica were the unfortunate exception. They'd been in pretty much the same situation Kisten and Ivy were during their lifetimes, having grown up together and brought up to eventually marry and have little baby vamps that would carry their names into the next generation. They were never given a choice. The way Erica talked about him, when I could get her to open up to me, made me believe in soulmates, though. They were each other's everything. Seth had been a quiet guy with a dry sense of humour and a good heart, a perfect penchant to her (usual) flippant and slightly bubbly self.

I could only hope that side of the young vampire wasn't gone for good after all she'd been through. I did what I could for her, heck it felt like she was grafted to my chest sometimes, but talks, hugs and a bit of blood here and there don't exactly go very far in the face of survivor's guilt. Erica's memories were whipped without a trace left over, but that didn't mean the charm had been a true 'get out of jail free' card. What I hadn't foreseen at the time was that Erica would know she was in that house when Seth was tortured and killed but have no recall of it; she got out with a few scars, torn clothes and a horrible taste in her mouth from her sister's blood, while Seth was dead and messed up so bad I didn't expect to see an open casket tonight. Not to be trite about it, but it hurt her a lot. She blamed herself for it, couldn't accept that none of it was her fault. It was too unfair for her to be okay after what happened. I knew the feeling, but fuck me if I knew how to get rid of it besides letting time patch things up. Bloody vengeance might eventually help us both too; we'd both lost our loved ones to the same rat-sucking bastard, after all. It was part of the reason why I'd finally started taking care of my blunted magical abilities, despite knowing it meant resuming my lessons in the ever after that much sooner. I didn't care how much smut I'd put on my soul, once I was done with him, he would regret ever being born. Now if I could only make sense of the clues I had about him...

And, yeah, I said hugs, talks _and blood_. Surprise, Erica and I had managed to strike a blood balance.

I know what you're thinking, but don't go calling me a vamp hussy just yet. I never planned for it to happen (heck, I barely thought of her as a vampire at all, just a kid who gave really strong hugs), and neither did Erica. On the first night she came back from her 'sister time' with Ivy, exhausted beyond words but unable to sleep, she came to me in the living room, a plea for comfort in her eyes. Before I could even blink she was snuggled up to me under a shared blanket, sobbing uncontrollably; my arms had wrapped tightly around her without any conscious thought on my part. I let her stay there long past the moment her tears soaked through my pj's top, all the while not realising my 'mistake'. She'd been through a great deal of stress a day and a half earlier, and if there's one thing Ivy taught me during her time as Piscary's Scion it's that stressed out living vamps burn through their reserves of blood many times faster than normal. Erica was going hungry, but I didn't realise that at the time. I stupidly didn't click that our scents were mixing either, not even when she buried her face in the hollow of my neck, inhaling shakily between bouts of wild sobs. It's obvious in hindsight that I was starting to smell familiar and comforting to the young vamp, something she desperately needed at the time. Before either of us knew it, her instincts had taken her over. Saying that in regards to Erica is a lot different than what it had been for Ivy, though; it was more like auto-pilot in her case. She didn't ravage me at all; in fact, she was so gentle I barely felt the initial bite. I only realised what she was doing after her first pull left me abruptly winded, and what I felt through our blurring auras at that point would not let me stop her.

What I felt... it's hard to describe. It wasn't a feeling non-vamps are brought up to name, so I can only tell you it was most definitely not sexual in nature. It was part nurturing instinct, part quasi-maternal protectiveness, part friendly support. I wanted to wrap the fragile vamp in the essence of my being, to keep her safe and warm and... God, I don't even really know what I felt. More than a little ambivalent, of course. There was some ecstasy from the chemicals in her saliva, of course, but it was so much, _much_ milder with her than it was with Ivy it didn't really enter the equation. I think... what I gave Erica was what I believed I wanted to give Ivy after the first time she bit during that mess with the Focus; acceptance, closeness, comfort. It certainly made me feel even dumber for thinking those feelings were platonic in nature for as long as I did... and speaking of the big sister, I do realise how ironic it is to say no to her but letting Erica bite me. It's a matter of size... of teeth. Not of... you know... hum...

Okay, I just blew a hole into that whole "not sex with Erica" thing. That just came out wrong. I didn't mean to, really. It wasn't at all, not the first time, nor any of the other three times since. I might freak out a bit about it, but not about the act or the person I did it with... see, this is what I mean; there's no way to talk about this without it sounding sexual. It's like the modern English language has no word to talk about sharing blood in a platonic way, kinda like what Mia said about the way banshees see the world... Fuck it, it was the way Ivy would react when she learned her baby sister had gotten her teeth into me (more often than she did, by the way...) that freaked me out, okay? That's what made me babble in my head like that. You've seen her temper. I really didn't want to see the sisters fighting at a time like this, especially not "over me", so to speak. There was really no overlap in what I felt for them, but go tell that to vamp territoriality.

Anyway, Erica didn't seem nearly as torn about it as I was... when she woke up still in my arms the next morning. She was much more aghast about biting me without asking for my permission than biting me period. Take out the crippling heartache and all that would be left would be a normal, healthy teenage vamp who didn't fret about needing blood and closeness, or fulfilling it with someone who cared about her... and we're back to the whole vamp culture thing again, so I won't delve into that again for fear of making Erica sound like some kind of pervert. Suffice to say she tried to cram half of her stash of brimstone down my throat the following morning, which was so like Ivy it would have been priceless under better circumstances. It was street grade, not medicinal though, so before she sent me to the hospital for OD'ing on the drug, I hastily wolfed down one of Ivy's cookies.

After that, well, we decided to do it again a few days later. I knew the blood helped her relax like a two-hours crying session, a glass of wine and a hot bath all wrapped into one. It helped her get some much needed sleep, so even if that was the only benefit she got out of sharing blood with me I'd gladly keep donating, even if it suddenly started hurting bad. And it definitely didn't hurt me, even if I gave her blood on a semi-daily basis all week. She took so little out of me that she made my happy encounter with Ivy right before she died look like her big sis bled me dry. She only took a few sips and it was all done. It was barely worth mentioning the blood I lost. The closeness she felt with me right after a bite also helped her open up to me more, let her empty her heart until her grief relinquished its grip enough that she could breathe again. Feeling a little doubtful about the whole thing took a backseat to that. It was good for her- er, I mean it made her feel better (stupid language...), and that's what mattered.

I still felt a twinge of guilt tucking away the cell phone...

I took a quick glance in the mirror to make sure I was presentable, feeling a little relieved that the gauntness my cheeks had put on in the last few weeks had subsided. My eyes were green again instead of that dull, muddled water-stained colour they'd changed to. My skin was getting paler, but with my new aversion to sunlight, it's not like that could be helped. I could almost convince myself it looked better that way, now that I was mostly healthy again; it no longer straddled the pasty line between pale and somewhat tanned. It wasn't the flawless alabaster of Ivy and Erica's skin, but it was getting there. I made sure my shirt and jeans didn't look too rumpled from that earlier phone sex session, gave my hair a token stroke of brush and declared myself fit for a casual afternoon brunch with friends.

"Sorry, Ceri, I had some bad timing there..." I called out to my elf friend as I exited the bathroom. "I hope you're hungry, because I've got enough food to feed an ar...my." I trailed off as I got to the sanctuary, stunned into silence by the company I found there. My heart instantly picked up, a small, cold jolt of adrenaline spreading through my veins and flushing thoughts of mountains of pancakes and vampires out of my head.

The second living room Ivy had put together in the sanctuary had to house the largest concentration of elves in the whole city. Trouble was, only Ceri was supposed to be there; not Quen, definitely not Jonathan and most definitely not councilman Trenton motherfucking Kalamack.

Having that many people that aren't exactly opposed to seeing you dead in your living room is just a bad, bad way to start what was sure to be a bad day. That thought must have shown on my face, because Ceri winced apologetically as soon as I entered.

"Ceri," I began, my eyes narrowing in a mild glare at the obvious culprit. "Trent." I acknowledged the businessman, deciding that since no guns were drawn or lines taped, I might as well pretend we were civil. "Quen. To what do I owe this... pleasure." The word tasted sour to me, even if skipping over Jonathan gave me some measure of satisfaction. The haughty elf shared a look with his employer, one that seemingly said 'I told you so.' Something in Trent's answering gaze must have spelled 'shut the fuck up or I'll cut you', because dear old Jon positively shrivelled up under his glare, which was enough to brighten my day just a little, especially when he headed for the door and saw himself out. _Go wait in the car, that's a good boy... _Then I remembered that Trent usually had more patience for his obnoxious assistant. I took a closer look at him.

The blond elf looked fairly tired this afternoon, though I doubt anyone who didn't know him personally could tell. Oh, he was definitely not slacking off; he was just as well-groomed as ever, his business suit just as perfectly pressed and not a single hair off his head was out of place, but it all lacked glamour. Little crow's feet were starting to appear at the corner of his eyes, which seemed a bit more sunken than I remembered, and I could swear he'd lost some weight since the last time I saw him. He didn't fill that suit jacket as mouth-wateringly as he used to, and it seemed to bring his whole aura of confidence down.

"Rachel, I'm sorry." Ceri began, looking mighty uncomfortable. "I know I shouldn't have brought them here without consulting with you first, but... I was worried you would refuse this meeting out of hand, and what we have to ask of you is important."

"Don't you mean you were afraid I'd say no with damn good reasons?" I replied bitingly. "You want me to go over the high points of what happened the last few times I saw him? Let's see... he tried to subjugate me and wipe my memories, used secrets about me to barter with a demon and took the meaning of 'headstone' a little too literally for my tastes."

"You say those things as if those encounters ended entirely favourably for me." Trent spoke up for the first time, his voice perfectly even and reasonable, all the better to annoy me with. "As I recall, not all of those did. Please, Rachel, let's not be petty here."

"I helped you get a cure for your people, brought you back from the Ever-After safely at a personal cost, and my only thanks was a bruise the size of a small state around my neck and a the mother of all bumps on the back of my head. Don't call me petty, Trent." I met his eyes, feeling a familiar twinge as I did. They were the true green only elven eyes ever get to be, and as beautiful as the rest of him. That wasn't the problem; that someone this tainted and corrupted could also be this beautiful outwardly was. Trent was a man without qualms for killing in cold blood, blackmail, drug trafficking, illegal bioresearch and God only knows what else, yet he could realistically make the cover of GQ whenever he wanted. Not fair.

For a few seconds, Trent silently held my gaze and the scene to come unfolded in my head. He would snap back at me any second now. He couldn't help himself, whenever we were together, we both regressed to six years of age, our surroundings became a playground and our conversation matter a toy one of us didn't want to share. Every time. Ceri knew this; why she thought this time would be any different was beyond me.

"You're right, of course. Accusing you of pettiness is undue. Apologies, Rachel." Trent tipped his head respectfully at me. Jaw, meet floor. "I will say in my defence that I was under a great deal of strain when we both came back. I believed you had made me your familiar, and it was just revealed to me what my father's work had undone in you. I was not in my right mind at the time, but I do owe you an apology for my actions then as well. Forgive me."

Jaw, meet basement floor. Even if he was only sucking up to me... well, damn, that was a lot more respect than Trent had ever given me. Sure, there was that moment in the Ever After when he'd thanked me for interrupting his marriage to that cold, clammy bitch Ellasbeth, but actual acknowledgment that he'd wronged me? Even when he came to me for help after he put me in a rat fight (as a minx, by the way, which was one of the most terrifying moment of my life) he never even had so much as a crease on his forehead from guilt. That someone as proud as Trent just apologised twice within thirty seconds was simply baffling.

"So you're not here to settle a score, then?" I asked waveringly, still thrown off balance that the expected resistance never came, like climbing the last of a set of stairs but expecting another one. "You're not here to fix the 'mistake' your father made by curing me? Don't want to kill me before I turn you into my familiar in more than just name?"

"No, indeed, I'm not and I don't." Trent answered, though his calm façade wavered a bit at the reminder that demon law could possibly give me such power over him. "I don't mean to be rude and order you around in your own home, but please, have a seat. We have matters to discuss."

"I'll stay standing, thanks Ceri." I said when the blonde elf moved on the couch to make room for me next to her. I didn't like the hurt look my refusal put on my friend's face, but I didn't want to act chummy with Trent any more than necessary. "So if we're not going to be trading nasty words with each other, then you must need me for something." I thought out loud, crossing my arms defiantly. I scoffed at the disgusted look on Jonathan's face. Yeah, I was definitely spot on there. "You're off your game today, Trent. I don't have money troubles right now, so I don't have a clue how you're hoping to get my help with whatever 'matters' you want to discuss." Trent had a gift to sense whenever my bank account was about to run dry; that was usually the time he came to me with a shady proposal and a five-figure check. Thanks to Ivy, though, I was keeping afloat pretty well; she had her parents paying me pretty generously for baby-sitting their younger daughter until the conflict in the underworld blew over. How she arranged for that payment I didn't want to know, but I collected on the whole month Erica had been here. Judging by the amount, either Erica ate a lot more normally or they expected me to keep watch on her until she turned twenty. Tamwood-Randall money; there's a lot of it, I tell you.

"Oh, I think you may have some clue what this is about." Trent replied in a tone that was more familiar to me, meaning a lot less formal and respectful, and maybe a bit reproachful. Ha. I knew the apologies were an act. "I hear you've been cozying up to the problem I'm here to discuss, after all."

"I've been... You're here about Ivy?" I asked, turning to both blond elves in turn.

"Yes." It was Ceri that answered, after a quick consultation with Trent. "Rachel, please sit dow-."

"What about her?" I cut her off abruptly. I didn't usually snap at Ceri, partly because she was so nice and sweet and partly because she could scare the pants off me when she decided not to be, but she didn't usual bring uninvited guests into my home either. She never acted guilty unless she knew she was, either, and coming from a woman who casually worked black magic every other day, that should tell you something. If Ivy was truly a 'problem' to Trent, then the elf had to have something nasty planned for my lover, and Ceri knew it, yet she still brought him here to seek my help with whatever that plan was. As if it wasn't enough that Jenks called me a dumbass for sleeping and talking with Ivy, now Ceri joined in... I idly wondered if their being here was Ceri's or Trent's idea, and I got just a little angrier with Ceri. Even if it wasn't her idea, Ceri had at least played along, and friends don't do that. You'd never see me bringing Al to her daughter's shower party, right?

"Again, I'm sure you know. Stop playing the fool, Rachel." Trent answered in Ceri's stead. "Unless you haven't stepped outside or turned the TV on for the past four weeks, you must have noticed the chaos Ms Tamwood has been spreading. More than half the vampire families are in line with her now, and she's been aggressively taking over assets all over the city from her kind and outsiders alike. The slate is almost clean, to be honest. Give her a few more days, a week at most, and she will exert more control over the Cincinnati underworld than even Piscary did in his glory days before the Turn."

"Oh, let me guess... you're not special enough to be the exception? Ivy's all up in your business, isn't she?" I inquired mockingly, moving on without awaiting an answer. Ivy had already told me he'd regret ever messing with me once she was done with him; I didn't see genuine regret yet, but if he was desperate enough to ask for my help, he had to be feeling the pressure. "That's the obvious question. What's a heck of a lot less obvious is this; what the hell possessed you to think I'd help you do anything about it? From where I'm standing it sounds like she's cleaning up my hometown, one scumbag at a time." I didn't have a severe enough case of tunnel vision to really believe that, but I was pissed enough at the elves in the room to be petty about Cincinnati's troubles. I wanted to antagonise him. It didn't seem to work, however. Trent knew me too well to believe I'd dismiss everything Ivy had done; I hadn't, by the way. I just thought that she was the better choice to rule this city's vampire population, and what she was doing now was something of a necessary evil. She tried to talk people into following her first after all, or so she said.

"I don't buy it." The elf scoffed. "You're not a 'result at all costs' kind of person, Rachel, but if that's your official stance, I'll bite. You're partly right. Ms Tamwood is indeed interfering with many of my business interests." Trent stated calmly. "She has executed a brutal hostile takeover of many of my... alternative assets."

"You mean your brimstone operations?" I asked aggressively, getting further annoyed that I couldn't faze him.

"It's actually worse than that. Much worse." Maybe it was, but you couldn't tell from his tone of voice. There's a reason the guy was on the fast track to City Hall despite everything illegal he did on the side. He'd be ruined of course if it got out he was part of the largest drug cartel on the eastern seaboard. That wasn't the real kicker, though. The drugs only served to fund his illegal biolabs and their research into genetic mappings and treatment of genetic disorders. THAT would get his ass on death row faster than you could say spit.

"Your labs?" I guessed, sobering up a bit when he nodded gravely. Since yours truly was a product of his bioresearch, I didn't exactly like the thought of them being exposed publically. I had threatened the man with the same exposure for almost as long as we had been acquainted, but it was 'in case of death' only, a promise that if I went down I would take him with me. If he was exposed then, my body would be cremated of course, but that was in my will since demons began messing with my life anyway; I didn't want to leave anything behind they might use to bring my soul back from the Afterlife. If he was exposed while I was alive though, the authorities wouldn't wait until I stopped breathing to break out the flamethrowers. "What is she looking for?" I asked, knowing the labs were a siphon for money, not a source of it.

"I don't know. Perhaps she's somehow learned of the vampire cure I have developed and wishes to own or destroy it. That's the only thing I found could possibly be of interest to her." Trent mused. "It's more likely she intends to use them to blackmail me. Not an entirely original plan, but one that you probably know for its effectiveness." He shot me a vaguely accomplice look, no doubt noticing that I wasn't biting his head off anymore. "Of course, she could simply want to let the human authorities do her dirty work for her."

"No, that can't be it. She knows that if you go down for that, I'll be in danger too..." I countered. Maybe what Trent suggested was the exact opposite of what Ivy wanted; to wipe out every trace of evidence of what was done to me, to ensure I'd never have that sword hanging over me again. "What about the cure for your people? Could she be after it? Maybe she doesn't want your kind to come back, or she wants it to happen on her own terms." I wondered. It would be the first time Ivy ever manifested any interest in the elves' future, but maybe it came with the whole master vampire thing. Piscary seemed to have a feud with the elves, and now that I knew where vamps came from thanks to Mia, I saw it in a different light.

"This is not the right way to go at it, then." Trent replied. "I've shared the data you helped obtain with my collaborators across the world. Wiping out my labs will set us back, but not stop us entirely."

"Is Ray going to be all right?" I turned to Ceri and Quen, remembering their unborn daughter would suffer the same fate as a lot of elven children if she wasn't treated for some reason... like a bunch of angry vamps occupying Trent's labs. _Fuck Trent, I'll at least talk to Ivy if there's a problem there. Ceri's her friend too, for God's sake. She's not unreasonable._

"Ceridwen's child is not in any immediate danger." Trent answered in Ceri's stead, using her full name and not the diminutive she preferred. _Formal, huh? Guess you got told to be good._ I probably owed it to Ceri's presence that he didn't lie to me about the health of her daughter. Sick wittle babies would have been a great way to sucker me into helping him get his toys back from the new righteous bully on the playground. "We've done all the in-utero work we can on her. Ray will be one of the first healthy elven children born in millennia. Ceri and Quen are one of the luckier elven couples, however." He cleared his throat, sounding reasonable and concerned. "The news of the cure's availability has caused a bit of a baby-boom. There are others still awaiting treatment for their unborn children. If they don't get certain gene therapies before the foetuses reach a set maturity, well, I don't need to tell you that these children's health will unavoidably suffer in years to come."

_Oh, ok, _here_ comes the suckering, now with one hundred percent less lying..._

"All right, all right, no need to break out the emotional blackmail..." I caved immediately. What can I say, sick children are a sensitive subject for me. "I'll have a word with Ivy about allowing you to perform those treatments, if she hasn't wrecked the labs already." The more I thought about it, the more the only hypothesis that made sense was the one where Ivy was trying to erase my origins. "I'm not doing this for you, so don't look so smug." I added before Trent could as much as smile. "I'm doing this out of hope those baby elves won't turn out quite as bad as you did if somebody gives them a chance."

I knew I just hit a nerve when the elf's face darkened and closed down. Trent liked to believe he was better than the rest of this city's gallery of criminals.

"You're naive, Rachel. Naive and blind, as always." Trent said with a new strain tightening his voice. "We're more vulnerable than you can fathom, just barely coming back from the brink of extinction. Whether you like it or not, our enemies do not operate on same moral level you do, and that means we cannot either. If I, if we had no means to protect ourselves against them, the vampires would have finished what the demons started long ago. Their feud with us runs deeper than you can possibly understand." Yeah, I actually had some idea of how deep that could go. The vamps were entitled to be a little pissed at their elven creators, if you ask me. "Let me ask you this; should we simply let them wipe us out? Or should we give ourselves the means and the influence to keep ourselves and our children safe?"

"Trenton, that's enough." Ceri gently interrupted Trent's self-righteous rant, and the scathing reply that never made it past my lips. "We did not come here to discuss the means through which you achieved your goals; we came here to enlist Rachel's help to ensure the future health of our friends' children. We succeeded. Please, both of you put your differences aside. There's enough of that going on in our streets."

"I'm not helping him, I'm helping mothers who will have to watch their babies suffer if unless do something..." I muttered pettily, glowering at Trent.

"I don't mean to imply that her help is not appreciated." Trent addressed Ceri grudgingly, ignoring me. "Merely that it is insufficient. Asking Ms Tamwood's permission to perform those treatments is all well and good, and perhaps considering your... relationship to her, she may even indulge us, but it doesn't get her to vacate our property. I won't let a vampire keep this kind of hold over me. She needs to be stopped."

"Aaaaand we're back to me helping the guy who tried to kill me multiple times against my best friend. Remind me again why I should do that? Oh, that's right, you don't have an argument." I drawled airily. "Ivy holding you by the short hairs is really fine by me. If she could just clean your bastard friend Saladan's clock while she's at it, I'd be perfectly content."

"Now you're being short-sighted. How typical..." He scoffed, making Ceri sigh and slowly shake her head at the two of us, prompting Quen to place a supporting hand on the elf's slender shoulder. I felt a bit sorry for her, but if she thought she could get us to see eye to eye, she had another thing coming. "Please, enlighten us. Follow your logic to its inevitable conclusion. I'm curious to hear how you intend to survive your friend's so called clean-up of Cincinnati."

"Are you threatening me, Trent?" I asked roughly, a thinly veiled hostility creeping up in my demeanour. "Because if you think Ivy's rough on you now, just wait until I get a reason to go after you again. I'll make sure there's no pixy to help you get rid of the paperwork this time." I was almost salivating at the thought of the evidence Ivy had gathered for me against Trent, and the opportunity to use it to legitimately go runner on his ass. Yeah, unlike him and despite my sometimes whacked methods, that sort of things mattered to me.

"No, I'm not, Rachel, not at all." There was a dark smirk on his face now. "I'm simply wondering what you're expecting to see happen once Ms Tamwood is done with us lowly dregs of society, and her power over this city is established. Who do you think she will turn her attention to then, hmm?"

Overly dramatically, I pointed a finger to my chest. It was my turn to snort. "I'm not vain enough to believe I'm the sole reason why she's out there doing what she's doing, but I do know I'm one of them. Besides, if Ivy wanted to hurt me, she would have done so already. How do you explain that?" It would have been really easy for her to slip her fangs in me while I was asleep on top of her, let me wake up bound to her and have me follow her out like a puppy, yet here I was, free to be in my home in this wonderful company. Ivy gave me proof I could tentatively trust her once more, and I was already starting to, a heck of a lot more than Trent.

"There could be several explanations for her behaviour. The thrill of the hunt, for one. She's a vampire, after all, and that is one thing they all tend to savour." Trent argued. "She could also be waiting until she has no distractions left to come after you. She knows she can't take you too seriously, and will not make the mistake of dividing her attention while dealing with you."

"Or, you know, she's trying to make sure the people that want me dead don't get another chance." I completed sarcastically.

"How interesting that the same people are also the only ones who will give you a ghost of a chance to survive. Who will you go to for help, once she turns on you? The IS? They will be answering to her before long. The FIB? Don't make me laugh. Demons? I doubt you would allow yourself to be turned into their baby machine, and that's what you will become in their midst. No, soon, you'll be alone, and Ms Tamwood has an army of vampires at her beck and call. Those are odds even you should think twice about tackling, Rachel."

"Yeah, well, see the part where I'm not convinced that Ivy will do anything at all." I shook my head. What he was suggesting was simply paranoid. "I think we've been around the subject here, Trent."

"Rachel, you can't tell me you actually believe that. I know you miss Ivy. I do too, dearly." Ceri began, looking at me like she was threading on eggshells. "I'm sorry that your time together was cut so short, but you're letting-" There was a barely perceptible clatter coming from the hallway leading to the bedrooms and kitchen, but that wasn't what cut Ceri off.

"There's someone else here. Wait here." Quen spoke calmly before he sprang into a blur of motion, making all of us jump. Before I could blink he had launched himself out of the sanctuary, after whatever it was that had triggered him. I had heard the noise, but after two years of living with a pixy brood, I didn't think much of random objects falling anymore. I didn't immediately follow Quen, despite the look of concern on the other two elves' faces. Then I remembered that there was someone else in the church that might have made that noise, and I sprinted out of the room after the Guardian.

"Quen, wait, don't hurt her!" I shouted ahead of me, coming to a sliding halt into the kitchen, just a little too late. In front of me stood Quen, holding against him a young vampire, her arm bent behind her back and her throat encircled by one of the elf's arm.

"Leggofmeyoubigjerk!" Erica cried out, kicking and screaming in Quen's grip as the larger man dragged her into the kitchen from outside, her struggling useless despite her vampire strength. Something she held in her hand slipped from her grasp and clattered out of sight on the linoleum floor, instinctively kicked away by the bodyguard.

"Hey!" I shouted at the elf. "She's not an assassin or a spy, she lives here, man! Let her go!" Quen made no move to do so. He just stared at a point over my shoulder, a look of... dread? in his eyes. I was only confused about it until Trent spoke again from behind me.

"Erica Randall... this is an unexpected development." Trent murmured as he walked in, a cold, calculating gleam in the eyes he riveted to the frightened young vampire. I'd seen this greed in his eyes before, a few hours before I thrashed his marriage last year, when he'd come to visit in search of the Focus. Back then, he intended to use it to kindle an interspecies war that would improve the elves' dominance... by bringing everyone else down a peg or two, at the cost of thousands of lives. He called it restoring balance. I called it playing the comic book villain...

Unfortunately, he was dead serious about it, and no doubt he was dead serious about whatever he had planned for my lover's baby sister. The thought of this power-hungry bastard using her sickened me beyond words. I couldn't stand to let him look at Erica like that. Something inside of me snapped and it unleashed the most primal protective fury I'd felt since Ivy's death. I tapped the line out back, letting the energy flood into my chi without taking any steps to make it less painful. It was instinct, really; in this mindset, I'm not sure I would have known what to do with that energy... but I sure could think of a few uses for the big nasty kitchen knife I snatched from the block on the counter before lunging for the beautiful monster in a power suit standing next to me. Before the elf could snap out of his daydreams of the uses he could make of Erica as a hostage, he found himself tackled against the wall, with the huge knife pressed ruthlessly against his throat.

"Stop looking at her. RIGHT NOW!" I snarled in a very startled Trent's face, my hair floating in the wind from the Ever After no doubt adding to my crazed, feral look. "And tell your goon to let her go, or Ivy is going to be the least of your worries. NOW!" I punctuated the threat with the knife's blade against Trent's vulnerable flesh. "I said I'd help you, but I'll _never_ let you go there, you son of a bitch! Erica is off limits, you understand me?"

"Rachel, don't you understand..." Trent stammered as he gestured frantically to Quen to let Erica go, but his bodyguard letting the young vamp go wasn't enough for me to take the knife from his throat. "With her, we can end this, peaceful-"

I wrenched him away from the wall before he could finish making that suggestion, my blood positively boiling in my veins at the frightened look it put on Erica's face. "Don't wanna hear it! Shut up! Get out of here, now!" I yelled, tossing him out into the hallway, his perfect suit and hair in disarray, rumpled in the scuffle. He made no move to leave, and so I lowered myself into a fighting crouch, the knife held in front of me, ready for use. My eyes were fixed on him, murderous and filled with my willingness to use the kitchen utensil to filet him, to hell with the consequences. The dry sound of pixy wings made me spin around, just in time to come face to face with Quen, who was no doubt about to come to his Sa'han's aid... before Jenks flew into his face with his pixy sword drawn. The blade was roughly a nanometre from his green pupil, Jenks holding it perfectly steady despite the murderous colour of his dragonfly wings, beating so quickly it looked like he was trailing fire.

"Try it. I'm already pissed at you for laying hand on the kid, come on, give me another reason to peel off your retina, lunker." He taunted the dark-haired elf. "What the hell, Ceri?"

"I swear, you all act like children!" Ceri yelled, her voice coming from further down the hall. "Silly, violent children!"

"I said I'd let you speak your piece, not you'd get to take a teenager hostage." Jenks growled, making me blink. He was in on it?

_Of course he was._ I realised in dismay, almost sagging with the feeling of betrayal overwhelming me. _How else could Trent have come in without unleashing the pixy horde?_

"No one will take anyone hostage, Jenks. You have my word." Ceri swore in a soothing voice, her hair beginning to float just as mine did. The magical display wasn't for the pixy's benefit, though, but for Trent's, with whom she shared a shrivelling look before addressing the man holding her boyfriend under the threat of his sword again. "Please, let Quen go. I rather like him with both of his eyes intact."

"Rache?" Jenks consulted me with a quick glance. His face fell a bit when he noticed how I'd gotten the wind knocked out of me by his treachery.

"If we've got Trent's word that they'll leave, just let him go." I decreed tiredly. It wasn't even three yet, and I already felt like crawling into bed. I left Jenks and Ceri to sort out the other elves and pushed past them, back into the kitchen. "You can come out now." I said to seemingly no one as I dropped the knife back into its slot. No one answered me. "Erica?" I called her out by name this time, and still no one answered me. Getting a little worried, I took a quick look around, breathing a sigh of relief as I found the young vampire hugging herself behind the island counter, trembling like a leaf from head to toe.

"Hey, there you are." I spoke softly to the scared teenager, kneeling next to her. I slipped a finger under her chin and pushed her face towards me, trying to smile comfortingly at her. The poor dear was hyperventilating; with the set of lungs on her, she sounded like a freaking turbine. Her eyes were huge, and needless to say, they were fully dilated. "It's okay. You're safe now." I murmured, gently directing her head to the crook of my neck, so she could take in our mingling scents. Her strong arms came around me frantically, and I shivered a bit as the cool material of her lightweight spring jacket touched my exposed skin.

"They're gone?" She whispered between two long breaths.

"Yeah. Yeah, they're gone." I answered. "Are you okay?" I gently disentangled myself from her and took her hands. I pushed the sleeves of her jacket up, not quite surprised to see large bruises left on her alabaster skin by Quen's hold, but I still winced in sympathy. Her throat looked okay in comparison, though. Overall, I was pretty sure that with her enhanced vampire healing she would be good as new in a day or two. She nodded a bit jerkily, which told me that her nerves were still shot to hell, though. "Need a shot of liquid courage?" I offered her with a warm smile, knowing a quick bite was the best way to calm her down enough to get her on her feet. We hadn't done it in the past two days, and she was getting jittery anyway; I'd already promised to share blood with her to take the edge off before the funeral, in fact. Might as well knock down two birds with one stone.

Erica agreed with another jerky nod and took the hand I offered her, letting me pull her up and help her out of her coat. She was wearing a snug Takata t-shirt underneath, its short sleeves leaving the bruising on her arms exposed, reinforcing her fragile appearance. I set the coat down on a chair and looked the young vampire in the eyes. I wasn't quite sure how to do this in our current position; we usually shared blood snuggled up on the couch, where our difference in height didn't matter. Ivy had bitten me while standing before, but the older vampire towered over me. Erica was five nothing to my five-eight. Even on her tip-toes, she wouldn't reach my neck comfortably.

"Give me your wrist. It'll do." Erica directed me, understanding my uncertainty. She extended her hand to me, and I placed mine in it, letting her bring it to her mouth. She slowly parted her lips, letting me catch a tiny glimpse of fangs before she drew them across the veins of my wrist. I gasped at the sharp pain, but it turned into a soft sigh as soon as her lips sealed around the wound and her saliva started working. I breathed in deep, letting her pheromones dampen the pain and turn it pleasant. There really wasn't much in common with my blood encounters with her sister there. No white hot flash, no overwhelming feeling, just a sense of peace and contentment. It was like cuddling after sex with your one and only, without the sexual element; closeness, understanding, comfort.

One thing that was identical with both Ivy and Erica was my desire to protect them, brought to the surface and multiplied by a zillion by the blood encountered and the aura bond it caused. Both women had such fear and pain within, one rooted deep into the core of her being, one gouging the surface of her soul. One's pain came from the inside, one's from the outside, both were intolerable to me. Sharing blood with Erica filled me with the same need to wrap the vampire in my being, to soothe her anguish and keep her safe. Not liking the way this position (I'm not starting with the sex again) didn't let me hold her like I wanted to, I manoeuvred to stand behind her, wrapping my free arm around her middle to gently squeeze her. Affectionately, I nuzzled her smooth dark hair and began to slowly rock her, happy to feel her begin to relax as the blood and warmth eased her stress. I nudged my aura along the bond forming between us, wanting her to have more than what the small amount of blood she took would normally allot her, so it would at least see her through part of the trying evening before dissipating.

_It's okay. You're okay. I won't let anyone hurt you, I promise._ I directed the protective intent to her through our auras as she began to stop, before the bond broke. The whole thing didn't last long; barely two minutes later, she stopped sucking on my bleeding wrist and started cleaning it up, thoroughly lapping up the blood left and filling the little parallel scratches with her healing saliva. "It's okay." I stopped her with a chuckle before she gave me a tongue bath. Like I said, Erica didn't shirk her responsibilities after a bite any more than her sister did. "I've got this. Why don't you sit down and wait for me here. I've got a few things I need to ask Jenks and Ceri, and then it's pancake binge time." One of the many things I learned about the young woman in the past few weeks is that she loved pancakes with an intensity that was almost scary, and the words 'pancake binge' got me a little smile and a nod. Too bad it would only be the two of us, without Ceri, Jenks, Matie and the brood...

"Okay. Rachel?" She said my name a bit timidly. "Thank you. You're a good friend, you know. I wasn't sure at first, but... now I can totally see why V would be head over heels about you. Thanks for standing up to that creep." She paused briefly, and for a heavenly second, her true, mischievous self peeked through the curtain of her pain and grief. "You should accessorize with your kitchen utensils more often. You make it work." She winked at me as I chortled. Yeah, 'hysterics with a big-ass knife' was not one of my better looks. She took a quick look around the kitchen, finding what she was looking for under the table and ducked to recover it. It was her cell, still open despite what had happened to it, and apparently still connected to whoever she was talking to before Quen went all Guardian on her. I left just as she began reassuring the other person that she was okay.

Grabbing a paper towel, I put some pressure on the cut on my wrist to stop the last of the seeping blood, amazed once more by the efficiency (and itchiness, I'll admit) of vampire saliva, before heading into the hallway, where my pixy and elf friends were still waiting, thankfully without Quen and Trent.

"They gone?" I asked the two of them quietly, hoping Erica wouldn't pick our discussion up. I had some chewing up to do. "What the hell was that about?" I growled at my friends.

"Friendship." Jenks answered with defiant simplicity, landing squarely on Ceri's shoulder, the two of them standing before me, mostly united. Ceri didn't look nearly as sure as Jenks did.

"Friendship?" I repeated incredulously crossing my arms. "That's what you call letting a man who wants me dead into my home? Friendship?"

"No, it's what I call not letting someone you care about walk to her own doom. For Tink's sake, Rache, you slept with an undead vamp! That's bad enough, but now you've been spending all week letting yourself be seduced by her too."

"Not by an undead vamp! By Ivy!" I countered bitingly. "By my freaking best friend!"

"Not by Ivy, not really. By her shadow." Jenks seemed to deflate a bit. "Rache, Ivy is gone. She's been gone for a month now, and yet you can't seem to let her go."

"Then why did you give her the sword, for God's sake? If that's what you really believe, then why did you go and do that?"

"Because she's doing what needs to be done! I didn't lie to you when I said that I respect she's not out to save the world, but you can't let her have you! That's why I agreed to let Trent tell you his side of things! I hoped you'd come face to face with what she's done and realise she's not your Ivy. I hoped your silly morals would make you balk."

"You son of a bitch..." I seethed.

"I had to do this, Rache. You're not listening to me. I worry about you, about what your grief is making you do. I know you feel your time together was cut short, but you're wrong. Just because you two didn't have sex didn't make the time you had less meaningful."

"Don't you dare say that, bug! It wasn't cut short, I had _a day _to truly accept her and be with her, and not even a whole freaking one! Even for _you_, that's not a lot of time!" I snapped ruthlessly at my four-inch friend. Jenks' eyes widened in the silence that followed, silence so thick you could cut it with a blade. I was panting, in the throes of a rage that was quickly dissolving as it slowly dawned upon me that I had just crossed the line. With his wife in such dire straits, her health dwindling, her days all but numbered, reminding Jenks of pixy life spans had been beyond pale. I heard him swallow something back, although whether it was tears or words vicious enough to tear me a new orifice I didn't know. He took off from Ceri's shoulder and flew past me into the kitchen, no doubt heading for the garden. I watched him go, too gutted by my own awfulness to speak.

"I asked Ivy to be Ray's godmother before her death." Ceri said simply from behind me, making me turn back to face her and stare at her, my eyes wide since that was the first I heard of that. The pretty elf's face was a mask of sorrow. "She actually agreed. I will not pretend it allows me to understand your pain, but you should know that I do share it, in my own way. Ivy was dear to me as well. I mourn her loss too."

"But you don't think I should be with her either, do you?"

"What I believe doesn't matter. I can see now that you won't be swayed either way. I can only trust that you know what you're doing, and hope that you will not lose yourself completely in this ordeal. I'm sorry I spoiled your afternoon, and about that misunderstanding with Trenton. Give my regards to Erica for me, please? Goodbye, Rachel. Good luck." Ceri gave me one last regret-filled look before bowing her head to me and turning to leave. No hugs, which was pretty much the equivalent of a slap in the face from her. I was too proud to do anything but let her go. None of what they said made sense to me. I loved Ivy, and even with the whole undead thing, I wanted to try and make something with her. Would I bring her back to the way she was if I could? In a heartbeat. It couldn't be done, though, but that didn't mean I would give up on our life together without a fight, no matter what my reticence was. Just like Ivy.

With the church now eerily quiet after the buzz of the past half-hour, I walked back into the kitchen. I didn't really feel like a pancake binge, but I'd promised Erica, and I would keep that promise. Besides, I'd need to eat something before the funeral... and meeting my vampire lover in the flesh once more.

A/N: So, cookie for me if I can update within three weeks? ;)


	22. Chapter 21

A/N: So, is anyone still remotely interested in this fic? Big apologies are due this time. I am the god of suckage for making you guys wait so damn long. Feel free to leave mean words. I deserve them.

I was planning to update this again on my first day back to school, which I mistakenly thought was going to be August 15th. It turns out my first day is actually September 7th, and not the one originally planned. So I decided I'd start with the updates straight away, since my deadline doesn't correspond with anything anymore. I'm sticking to my plan to update this again on August 22nd at the latest, though, and then again one week later. The good news is that there's a fair chance I'll make that deadline this time, because a fair chunk of the following chapter is already written and the two after (24-25) are done. Fingers crossed? Hell yes. Do I blame you for not remotely believing that? Nope.

Ce chapitre est dédié à la mémoire de Martin Léveillé, et offert en guise de sympathies à ses fils Félix et Gabriel. Je doute que tu ne la vois jamais, Fil, mais celle-là est pour toi. À ton courage et ton avenir, où que celui-ci t'emmène. Si t'avais des doutes que le destin a un sens de l'humour tordu, et bien sache que j'écrivais un chapitre mettant en scène des funérailles durant les derniers jours de ton père. C'est ma première dédicace à vie; prend-ça comme tu voudras. ;-)

Pierre-Luc

Chapter 22

The moon had already climbed a fair height into the cloudless night sky by the time Erica and I left the church for the funeral home where we would give our final farewell to the love of her life. It was huge and full and bright, almost as if it wanted to lean closer to the earth, to better bear witness to the grief of the young man's loved ones. The air was clear and crisp, uncharacteristically dry and agreeable for the season.

_If we've got to hold a vamp funeral tonight, I guess we can at least be grateful it's not raining..._ I thought, trying to find a silver lining somewhere, and promptly decided that a lack of rain wasn't cutting it, with no more than a glance at the young vampire walking besides me. Erica's shoulders were slumped under the light jacket thrown over her dark silk dress, her youthful features slack, almost as if she were in a trance. Her hand squeezed in mine was limp and cold, and her eyes, I painfully noticed, had drained of life and filled with dread. The irony that her sister was technically the dead one of the two didn't escape me, and yeah, it made hate the whole damn world just a tad more.

"It's all going to be over soon." I offered my grieving friend, placing a hand on her shoulder once we were both sitting in the car. "I know it's not a great comfort now, but I promise you it won't ever hurt more than now." Lame? Probably. It sure felt that way when I said it. However, in my experience no kind words really help with grief. Knowing someone knew what you were going through on the other hand, did. Erica would get more than her share of condolences tonight; she deserved at least one promise that her life wasn't over and the pain would eventually let go of her.

"I know." Erica answered on a whisper of breath, not exactly sounding convinced. "Will it ever go away?" She asked me with a thin, lost voice, turning her huge, shimmering brown eyes towards me.

"You want the truth?"

"Not particularly."

"No, it never will. You'll always feel like this." I gave Erica the lie she asked for, completely deadpan, falling back on my smart mouth to make up for my absolute lack of wise comforting counsel.

"You're a shitty liar." She snorted, making a dead, ugly sound that I think may have passed for a chuckle in some deep dark circle of hell.

"I take offence at that. Really. Look at my offended face." I made a completely neutral face, pointing at it as if it meant something, and the smile that went with that horrible chuckle appeared on hers. It tore my heart out, but it was undeniably a smile, a sign of life, a tiny flicker of hope, and at the risk of sounding like fortune cookie advice, I believe that all it takes is a flicker of hope to hold back the darkness. Deciding I didn't care if I made a tool of myself, I took her hand and took the plunge, looking her earnestly in the eyes and speaking from the bottom of my heart.

"I don't know if it'll ever go away completely. I can't promise you it will, because it never did for me. Not with my dad, not with Kisten. What I do know is that right now it feels like there's a hole in your chest where Seth used to be. It's huge and ragged, and you don't figure for second that you'll ever be able to live with it. It's horrible, and I can't lie to you, it'll be bad for a while longer, but it'll get better too. Every day will be easier than the previous. You'll smile a little more, breathe a little easier, and begin to enjoy things you like again. You'll start to live again, little by little, and one afternoon, sometime in the future, you'll wake up and find that the hole doesn't hurt anymore. It'll still be there, but it won't take up all the space in your heart. You'll remember the good times with Seth, and those memories, they'll overshadow everything else. Once you're there, you'll be ready to move on, cherishing those thoughts of him, just like I know he wants you to, wherever he is now. That's my promise to you, Erica. That's the truth."

I held Erica's gaze for a long time, letting my words sink into her mind, her small cold hand in mine. When her eyes began to swim with tears that she carefully wiped away with the cuff of her jacket sleeve, I knew she believed me. "You make me want to head to bed, and it's not even eight o'clock yet..." She laughed sadly, choking on it a bit before reclining in her seat and letting her eyes flutter close, her breathing deepening. "God, I don't want to go. I don't want to say goodbye."

"I know. Trust me, I do, but that's the one thing you need to do before you can really get better. You've got to put him to rest now. Tonight's about giving you and his other loved ones closure. It's the hardest pill to swallow, but it's also the point where things really start getting better too. Trust me."

I put the key in the ignition, started the engine and backed out of the driveway, taking one last look at the darkened church, feeling acutely aware of the unfamiliar comfort of the scarf around my neck. Jenks wasn't tucked in it, the two of us still angry with each other and too mule-headed to do anything about it. No apologies came forth from either injured party, which meant the car was pixy-free. I didn't feel too good about that, to be honest, but there was no turning back now. I didn't have time to go make up with my four-inch friend. I stepped on the gas and left the church behind, though I couldn't do the same with the foreboding feeling being without backup brought about.

From the church, the ride to the funeral home was a quiet one. My nice quiet neighbourhood gave way to a nicer one as we left the inner outskirts of the Hollows toward the outer ones, an upper-class district where the ruling vampire families Seth, Erica and Ivy were born from made their often grandiose homes. Three or four-stories high manors became the norm as we got closer to the river, cars in driveways multiplied, slush covered lawns became acres of grounds that split up neighbours. It was all a pretty far cry from the place I grew up in.

We weren't the first ones there when we got to the funeral home. The sober white building was surrounded by cars, most of them fancier than my little red convertible. It was sticking out like a sore thumb, to be honest, which made me take a quick, uncomfortable glance at my attire. It had been ridiculously easy to find the clothes meant for me in Ivy's closet, my beloved anal retentive vamp having neatly split her closet in two to make room for what she got me. My jaw had nearly dropped at some of the sights in there; there was everything from a gorgeous, backless evening gown to factory torn jeans and washed out t-shirts. What tied a knot in my throat however wasn't anything I could even consider wearing tonight; a tiny sheer nightie clearly meant to be more enticing than covering, and unobtrusive during bedroom activities, to the point wearing it modestly without panties on would be a reckless endeavour. The garment fit me perfectly, and, saddening but true, had to have been a wishful purchase on her part, considering she bought it back when we weren't together, and she was convinced we never would be. I'd left most of the clothes in her room, but that one I moved to my own closet, making a mental note to get myself some matching lingerie for it, so I could wear it for Ivy the next time we were together. Maybe I could make a date with her next week. She had to have a little sugar coming her way for her patience with me...

Other than the intimate clothing, I picked from Ivy's closet a knee length skirt that wouldn't scandalise anyone and a bell-sleeved shirt with a high collar, slinky and flattering to my silhouette. I'd also borrowed Ivy's black silk duster, having no coat of my own that felt appropriate for the weather and occasion; its fit wasn't as perfect on me as it was on her, but it wasn't glaringly bad. Exceptionally the only leather I wore was my pair of vamp-made boots, and I even had a pair of black pumps with me in a garment bag to replace them once we were inside. As Ivy would say, I looked almost respectable. Didn't mean I looked _good_, though, and I didn't have a breeding line behind me like most guests would...

"You look fine." Erica assured me. "Ivy's got the fashion sense for funerals."

"Says the shameless goth girl." I teasingly defended my lover with a smile, even though I made the same joke about Ivy's taste in clothing myself a few hours ago; the look of dread in her eyes she stared at the funeral home with was just too unbearable not to try and distract her. "You ready?"

"No. But I guess it doesn't matter. Do what you gotta do, right?"

"That you do." I nodded with a tight-lipped smile. "Head high, back straight, and remember it gets better from here."

"It gets better from here." She repeated after me, trying to convince herself as she straightened her back and raised her head. The look of dread in her eyes didn't go away, though. I exited the car first, walked over to her side and opened her door, offering a supporting hand to my grieving friend. She took it slowly, letting me help her out even though she was physically stronger, faster and more nimble than I could ever hope to be. Mental fortitude was another story altogether, though. I hated seeing her innocence Ivy had worked so hard in life to protect grow calluses.

"And if everything else fails, I'm here for you, and so is your family. Tonight, there's no shame in leaning on someone you love to cry. Got it?" I reminded her, discreetly slipping my hand at the small of her back when we got to the front door. Two men in suits were manning the door, holding them open for us without even stopping us to ask whose service we were here to attend. Quiet nods and soft spoken condolences greeted Erica as we walked into the large entry hall, glorious and sober at once with its marble and pale, subdued tones. The ceiling was high and old, solid wood furnishing contrasted well with the whites of the walls. A few employees busied about, all of them impeccably dressed in black suits, as opposed to the guys outside. These two at the doors probably didn't work here full time, then. It made me wonder if the vampires had hijacked the whole funeral home for themselves...

"Erica, Rachel! Over here!" A large blond man called us out a few seconds after we entered, walking towards us with a purpose. Without hesitation from either party, he took Erica in a surprisingly gentle and protective hug, whispering his sympathies against the top of her head before turning to me to offer an extended hand without letting go of the teenager. The familiarity he demonstrated surprised me, but only because it was a little hard to recognise him without the guns, body armour and heavy combat boots...

"Reed. You pulled bodyguard duty tonight?" I said by way of greeting, shaking the hand of Ivy's... helper? Enforcer? Bodyguard? You know, I'm not even sure what he was, or what the name for him was. I guess 'her vampire' is really the only way to describe him, since he was part of her Camarilla and answered to her. I didn't like thinking of the bear of a man as someone else's, but vampire customs be vampire customs. I didn't like them, never had and never would, but it's not like there was anything I could do to change them. "Is Heidi around here too?"

"She got picked for shadowing the boss. I don't know why, but they both thought she was much less conspicuous for the role than me for some reason. Must be the beard." He answered, thoughtfully rubbing his impeccably trimmed blond beard, jokingly oblivious to the fact he towered most conspicuously over the rest of his peers. His fake accent, I noticed to my ears and nerves' bliss, was mercifully gone. I had an inkling his gorgeous brunette friend had a hand in that, but getting the latest gossip on vampire hook-ups would have to wait at least until after the ceremony. "She asked me to look out for you. I'll take you to her, if you want."

"Sure. Is there _anything_ else going on here tonight?" I asked with another look around. Other than the staff, everyone here was a living vamp, with the exception of the occasional undead here and there. I stood out like a sore thumb in the midst of all the graceful creatures that surrounded me. Heck, even Reed, in all his mastodon stature, made me look like a complete klutz... and he even had a slight but perceptible limp I was too scared to ask about. Why was that? I had an illustrated and schematised vampire dating guide sitting on my bedside table, so my knowledge of limp-inducing activities was rather thorough. Enough said.

"Nope. The bigwigs got the whole place to themselves. It's security and sympathisers all around. No one else allowed that isn't staff with a steel-clad background check. There's a truce in place, but a big chunk of Cinci's upper crust vamp population is here tonight, so we're not taking chances. Someone might not take the hint this isn't a good time to get their asses kicked."

"As long as you didn't ruin the last goodbyes of someone's grandma..." I leered at Reed, mentally picturing a bunch of vamp gorillas driving grieving families out of the funeral home.

"No worries, we booked the place first. No toes were trampled, honest."

"Who's here yet?" Erica asked.

"Mostly people from Seth's side of the family." He answered, meaning the ones who were of the same bloodline as the young vampire. "Melissa's here too. She's been asking after you a lot... in between glaring daggers at her mum, of course. You know how she is."

"Oh, God... she must hate me so much..." Erica whimpered at the mention of the name, the swimming in her eyes spilling over and her feet suddenly rooting themselves in the polished marble of the floor.

"Who's...?" I asked, holding my young vamp friend a little closer before she freaked out any further.

"Melissa is Seth's older sister," Reed answered me, "and their twice deceased father's daughter. And you cut that out, young lady." The big man added gruffly. "No one here blames you for anything, and if someone didn't get that memo, I'll be sure to straighten them out myself. Melissa was worried sick about you is all."

_Damn... Melissa is their father's daughter, which means Seth was from his mom's line, _and_ she lost her husband too... _ I thought, my heart going out to a no doubt heartbroken woman I'd never met. "And why would she be 'glaring daggers' at her mom?" I gave them both a questioning look, beginning to wonder if it was standard procedure for elder vamp daughters not to get along with their mothers; just look at Ivy and her mom...

_God I hope these two can keep it together tonight..._ I silently prayed to whoever was out there the two Tamwood women present wouldn't be at each other's throat.

"She's the black sheep in a way. They have, shall we say, differing world views? Mrs Anderson is a bit of a traditionalist, and to put it mildly, Melissa's not a big fan of a lot of our customs. She's trying to make her own way, and she makes a lot of waves, wherever she goes." Reed answered. "She's a lot like the boss, in a way, except she does all of her ass-kicking verbally. I think you'll like her."

"Hmm." I made an unconvinced sound. If she was making a scene here of all place, Melissa and I were not on the right track to getting along. I might be a loud, self-admitted, oft-obnoxious, troublemaker, but even I knew when to shut my big mouth and keep quiet... like now. Now was really a great time for that. "We'll see."

"She's great, Rachel." Erica assured me distractedly, sounding relieved that someone she obviously held in high esteem didn't hate her for pulling through where her brother had been killed. Goddamn survivor's guilt... "Up until she left last year, she's been like another big sister to me. She's always been there for Seth and me. She even had a few pointers for me the first time I..." Whatever the young vamp was about to say died in a strangled warble, though judging by the blush coloring her cheeks, it wasn't a painful stab of grief that cut her off but an embarrassing, or perhaps intimate, memory. I didn't push it. Erica was pretty shameless about things, and if whatever she was remembering could embarrass her, it was probably deep into TMI territory. I didn't want to know.

"Where did she leave for?" I changed the subject, partly because I was curious about Seth's sister, partly because Erica looked like she needed a minute to compose herself before going in. "What is it she does?"

"She's... a vampire rights lobbyist, I think would be the right term for her. Fresh out of law school and trying to shake things up for all of vampire kind. She calls the old ways medieval, want them flushed down the drain; no more tributes and gifts of blood, equal legal protection for vampires and citizens of other species, the end of organised marriages and enforced breeding lines, that sort of things." Reed answered with an admiring glint in his eyes. "Risky stuff, but she couldn't get to Washington fast enough once Cormel stepped down. She's been sitting on nice ideas for a few years, but I think you can guess she couldn't bring them forward with a dead vamp hell-bent on stability at all costs sitting in the oval office."

"Hmm, well, like I said, we'll see." I said neutrally, suddenly unsure if I should hold on to my poor first impressions. Considering how Ivy and Kisten died, I think you can guess I would get behind any movement that pressured for positive changes in the vampire world. That Ivy seemed to have those changes in mind went a long way to earn her some of my forgiveness for her more extreme methods. "And her mom is mad at her for that? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but the vampire world could do with a little more... twenty-first century? It seems trite to me, to be upset at someone for trying to make those kinds of changes."

"Hard to say if her political goals help or not. Mrs Anderson is older than someone like Mrs Tamwood. She's old enough to remember the Turn, and she's pretty hard-set in our ways, having been raised in them and all, but I think the real kicker is actually her boyfriend. Melissa left her picture perfect power-player GQ model asshole of a fiancé behind to date one of you guys."

"Seth's sister is with a witch?" _And just when I thought Ivy and I were special, I find another vampire princess who's slumming it with one of my kind..._ I thought wryly when Erica and Reed nodded in unison. And hey, more power to them; I'd never been happier with another witch than I'd been sleeping with someone from another species, especially vamps. Our species complemented each other well, I was finding out.

"Yup. They've been together for what, five years now?" He consulted with Erica. "Tell you the truth, their story reads so much like a harlequin novel it's disgusting. Melissa met Carson in law school, and as soon as their first day together was over they were set up as vicious rival. You know how young vamps tend to be the first time they're loose upon the world; she had trouble treating other species as equals. She looked down on him even when he matched her wits, he thought she was a spoiled brat who never had to work a day in her life. Carson had to fight tooth and nail to get enrolled, you see, and Melissa's place was reserved for her for a long time, even if she could've gotten in without name-dropping on her own merits. It led to them constantly trying to one-up each other, made it hell for their comrades to keep up with them. Their relationship started off as a bitter competition, moved on to a semi-friendly one, and it ended with Melissa resolving their differences years after they began by dragging Carson to her dorm room and having her wicked way with him." With a small smirk that I'm sure would have been a massive grin under better circumstances, Reed added, "Well, I suppose you won't find that last part in a harlequin novel, but anyway... they both graduated with honours, and they've been inseparable, and exclusive to each other, since. True love, of which I don't need to tell you Mrs Anderson does not approve."

"That almost sounds familiar..." I mumbled with a small, private smirk; Ivy and I hadn't gotten along in the beginning either, only it wasn't a steamy encounter in the broom closet that had resolved our differences but a sleep charm sucker punch, a length of rope and a bottle of nail polish. Good times, man, good times... "You know, I didn't picture you for such a gossip monger, big man. Or did you make all that up just to jerk me around?" I teased, but a quick glance at Erica, who actually had some business knowing, confirmed he hadn't.

"I'm shocked you'd think I made that up! And I'm not gossipy, I'm... keeping up with current events and developments in the community I'm part of." He said in a way that would have made me think of him as distinctly metrosexual if I hadn't seen him punch a hole in a linoleum floor dressed in combat boots and matte black body armour. "Word gets around, especially within a tight knit group with deeply rooted traditions, _especially_ about something this scandalous. I mean, Melissa is pretty much parading her magical stallion around. She was at least expected to keep something this 'shameful'" Reed mimicked big quotation marks, clearly indicating he didn't see it as any kind of big deal, "as discreet as possible, not flaunt it."

"Were there ever any rumours about Ivy and me?" I asked, curious about a not altogether different scandal.

"'Were there'? Why the past tense? There still are, like you wouldn't believe." Reed answered incredulously. "She's scarier, so no one tells it to her face, but Ivy has been the talk of the town ever since she swore off blood and broke off her engagement with Felps. The rumour mill has just been going crazy ever since she left the IS and went private with you though. They covered everything, from it being a simple crush she would get over once you put out, to you putting a spell on her, to stuff scientifically proven to be impossible. Wait, it's still impossible for two women to have children together the old fashioned way, right?"

"Hum, I think it might be possible under certain circumstances." I told him, torn between smiling at his distraught expression, chuckling at the ludicrous idea someone thought Ivy or I had knocked the other up despite lacking some essential equipment or chromosomes that could line up even if we did, and uncomfortably frowning in bitter jealousy at the reminder another woman had managed to literally have Ivy's baby.

_I wonder if Erica knows she's got a cute little banshee niece..._ I thought idly while Reed mused under his breath about what time men had left before women decided they were completely useless and got rid of them altogether. His comments managed to make me laugh, and I offered the gentle giant a reassuring smile before stealing a glance at Erica.

"Thanks for that, Reed." I scoffed before deciding the young vampire looked as steady as she was going to get. "Ready to go in?"

Without further ado, Reed guided us into one of the room with a door in the hallway, one that was large, spacious, and most importantly loosely filled with enough emotional vampires to make the scars on my neck and wrist tingle discreetly, even though I was still standing in the threshold and had barely drawn a single breath.

_And of course, it's freezing._ I thought, distraught and shivering, as I stretched the fabric of my sleeves to cover my hands and buried them under my crossed arms. I shouldn't have been surprised. A vampire gathering meant the air conditioning was working overtime, even though we were in the middle of spring. The temperature in here was a couple degrees lower than comfortable for most species. Note that I only say _most species_ because that ideal temperature is warmer for a witch, meaning this witch was anything but comfortable. _Maybe our species aren't _that_ compatible..._

A quiet hum of conversation filled the air, and needless to say I was facing a sea of black clothes and distraught expressions. It seemed the final death of such a young vamp touched something very profound amongst those whose immortality was supposedly assured... or perhaps that was a callous way to see it, and their species had nothing to do with it. The simple horror of Seth's death was certainly ghastly enough to warrant most if not all of those dead-eyed stares...

Erica left my side the second she spotted her parents, slipping past the crowd like water around rocks to go meet them, making me silently glad that she'd let go of me first and hadn't dragged me towards her terrifying mother. I'd never formally met Mrs Tamwood, and honestly, I didn't want to, even under better circumstances. What with her obsession with grand-children that Ivy sometimes rambled about, I felt pretty certain she would hate me for diverting her daughter's attention from the droves of eligible (read; male) admirers she no doubt had while she was still able to bear children. Undeads hold long grudges when it comes to that sort of things, and Mrs Tamwood was just the teensiest bit... immortal. And really freaking strong. And vindictive. Did I mention that already? Sorry. Like I said, the woman scared me, and the cherry on top was that I was expected to walk into her home for dinner later in the evening, too. The occasion made me worry whether I was on the vampire's guest list or her menu. No shortage of vamps to feed here, and I was the only non-vamp by the looks of it, save maybe the mysterious Melissa's boyfriend...

_Screw species solidarity, if they come after you, trip the other guy who's freezing his ass off..._

"You're with me, you know. The worse she can do is give you a nasty look. No need to-"

"Gah!" I yelped, the suddenness of the beautiful female voice's whispering in my ear making me jump out of my worried contemplations, and damn near my skin as well. "That's it, I'm putting a freaking bell on you! And not a tiny puppy bell, either, no, a church bell so big and heavy not even you can lug around! Try and sneak up on me then!" I rambled quietly through my gritted teeth at, you guessed it, Ivy. The vamp had appeared out of nowhere, a habit I could've sworn I'd browbeaten out of her over the months we'd lived under the same roof.

"Is it my fault you jump so easily?" Ivy embraced me from behind before I could turn to swat at her, her strong arms encircling me and her lips finding her favourite spot below my ear, instantly soothing the flames of my ire down to embers. With a very mild glare and my lips quirking despite my best effort, I turned around in the circle of her arms so we faced each other, tilting my head up and down to give my yummy vampire a once over. Ivy had gone with a dark woman's suit tonight, her shirt underneath the jacket as impeccably pressed as the pair of dress slacks she wore. Impractical but incredibly stylish black high heels, an easy concession for her to make with her sense of balance and the resilience of her body, completed the look, giving her the air of a perfectly confident business woman in absolute control of her surroundings. Even though she had the body language to match, her forehead was more rumpled than her clothes, a few lines breaking its usual snowy flawlessness. There were a few tiny crow's feet at the corner of her eyes, too, and I wondered as our earlier phone conversation played back in my head if the lack of rest and sleep was finally starting to get to her. Her brain was incredible and her body could withstand almost anything, even her stiletto heels, but even she needed to shut down once in a while. I didn't like how tired she looked, and it made me frown with the urge to kiss every little line off her face until it was smooth again. I liked her hair a lot, though. A perk of the way her cells could multiply at such a blinding speed on her say-so was that she could grow it a lot faster, and it now flowed in a flawless, unbroken ebon wave around her face and shoulder, almost down to her mid-back. Not quite as ridiculously long as it was when we first met, but more than enough to make me long to thread my fingers through the heavy lusciousness of it.

Like I said. Yummy.

"You wouldn't really do that to me, would you?" Ivy pouted.

"Without a second thought. In fact, I'd pat myself on the back about it." Her pout worsened at my ironic reply, making the usually intimidating and sexy vampire look like a wet kitten. The lure of slinging my arms around her neck was simply irresistible, and so I didn't even try. "What? Like I could get you to hold still long enough to chain you to a church bell if you didn't want to be? I'd _deserve_ a pat on the back if I could pull it off."

"Touché." Ivy admitted with a thoughtful chuckle before letting me pull her closer. "I'm sorry about that. It's just that I've been here since sunset, and my mother walked in all of three seconds after me. I needed a witchy break after spending all that time with her. You just smelled so good a second ago, I couldn't resist giving you a little scare..." Ivy trailed off, her eyes fluttering close as she inhaled our mixing scents. That my clothes didn't have the latest olfactory trends brought about by her change didn't seem to bother her at all. "The hint of adrenaline is lovely. You're scrumptious when your heart's racing, darling." She smiled as she leaned in, something sure to make my heart do just that in mind. I sighed happily when the rich decadent texture of her mouth covered mine, her delicate and feminine taste still as enthralling now as it was the first time we'd kissed, making me hope I would never get used to it and it would always feel this thrilling to kiss my darling vampire.

"I've waited all week to do that..." We both said at the same time and in the same longing tone as our mouths broke away from each other, my eyes twinkling at the surprise in Ivy's. Feeling coquettish, I sultrily licked her taste from my lips before nibbling on my lower one, all for her stressed-out benefit, my eyebrows raising, in perfect synchronicity like always, at the sight of her slightly expanding pupils. "What? It's true." I stated innocently, feeling a little forward. This wasn't the place for full-blown advances, but what was a little harmless flirting in preparation for what was sure to be a dreary evening? No serious harm done.

"Thank goodness I _didn't_ want to have those kinds of thoughts..." Ivy groaned quietly, taking a quick peek at the overhead lights to stop the slight dilation of her pupils. For a second, I thought I saw something in her face, something that looked analytical and maybe even a little wary, but it went away so fast I didn't really get a good read on whatever it was that travelled over her features.

"Is something the matter? Present circumstances aside?" I frowned, pushing up on my tip-toes so I could whisper in her ear, so quietly the drone of ambient conversation drowned my voice out to all but her. That was the second time she got that uncomfortable look in the past minute. Something had to be up with her. I silently hoped she wasn't suspecting, or worse had figured out, why I wore a scarf that covered up my neck and had swapped in my usual bracelet for my very conspicuous broad metal wristband. I was getting concerned for her, but that didn't mean I lost _all_ sense...

"It's nothing, nothing in particular. I'm not used to rest being such a scarce commodity, that's all. Even I have my limits." Ivy answered in a very similar fashion, her cool forehead coming to rest against mine, her eyes shutting lightly. "I need a break. The novel appeal of not sleeping wore off about a month ago, and frankly, it was easier to get used to the absence of sunlight than yours. I want my life and my little witch back." A small smitten smile tugged at my lips at the weary but earnest declaration, and I tilted my head back to kiss her lightly again. The vampire melted against me for a blissful moment we unfortunately had to cut short. _No place to make out, no place to make out..._ I mentally repeated myself over and over again, trying to snap my thoughts back to the seriousness of the current events and out of the gutter.

"Jenks isn't with you?" Ivy said rather huskily once we broke apart, looking like she was struggling with the same demons of lust I was.

"No." I answered flatly, the reminder of my earlier fight with our pixy friend like a dip in cold water. "We had... a bit of an argument. Nothing you need to worry about." I added reassuringly when she put on a worried face, holding her a bit tighter both to keep our privacy and to comfort myself. "Really."

She regarded me doubtfully, but I decided it was better not to mention the meeting with the elves that triggered the dispute. Ivy was a power player now, one who was already at odds with them, and if she learned of Trent's hastily hatched scheme to use Erica as leverage against her, or worse that he had almost put it into action, Cinci would no doubt be in for an even longer period of bloody war. Sweeping this afternoon's incident under the rug was for the greater good, even if it inadvertently saved Trent's sorry elf ass.

"You fought over me, didn't you?" She asked, my following silence all but confirming what she had already guessed in a single try. "I suppose I can't expect any different. He and I didn't even get a chance to chat since I came back. I'm sure he's feeling very disapproving of us now." She shrugged, dismissing the pixy's absence just like that.

"Aren't you even a little upset?" I gently prodded her, slightly off-put by how coolly she took the pixy's absence. "He used to be your friend too, remember?"

"He didn't 'use to be'. He still is, at least as far as I'm concerned. It's simply a big change to adjust to. I'll just have to build up our thrust again, the same way I did with you. Right?" She asked and I nodded my head, though I wasn't quite sure whether she meant that was all it would take to glue her friendship with Jenks back together or if she was asking me if I trusted her. I made some inarticulate noise at that, not quite sure on the former; Jenks' trust was a hard thing to earn, and an easy one to break. As for the latter, well...

_You know, I could totally do with another hug..._ I mentally sighed and wrapped my arms around the vampire's waist, letting my head tuck neatly beneath her chin. Her patented back torture devices made her almost freakishly tall, and that was one neat benefit. After a slight hesitation her arms wrapped around me without further questions, and I closed my eyes, soaking in her sudden, solid warmth and the feeling of intense safety I felt in her arms. I wasn't one-hundred percent sure about her, but in this instant, it sure felt right to be held like that.

"How come you're warm one second and cool the next?" I mumbled, not wanting to dwell on Jenks and warnings and funerals for a little while longer. Ivy hmm-ed vaguely in response, as if I'd disturbed her train of thoughts and she'd been too distracted to hear me. "I've noticed sometimes you're really warm and comfy to the touch, others you're almost cooler than room temperature. What's up with that?"

"Oh, that?" She chuckled softly before explaining. "My body doesn't function the way yours does anymore. My heart doesn't beat most of the time, my digestive track is inert, I only need to breathe in order to talk, I don't shed hair or sweat, things like that. What this also means is that my skin doesn't bleed away heat and energy under normal circumstances like yours does. It's pretty much all passive heat transfer. I'm always comfortable at room temperature."

"You're definitely not room temperature now." I nearly slurred when I pointed that out, my mind going pleasantly foggy. Damn, she felt good. The momentary solace from the cold and morbid atmosphere I found in her arms almost filled me with a selfish desire to snag her and whisk her away someplace private where we could cuddle (just cuddle; right this second I didn't want to see what colour panties she had on) in peace...

"I can get everything flowing again if needed, even become warmer than I was before when necessary... like when my girlfriend is freezing her pretty witchy butt off."

"Ooh, best bodily function ever." I nearly moaned as she demonstrated her ability. Her body quivered almost violently for several seconds, the rapid contraction and release of her muscles raising her temperature up a few more degrees, making me snuggle closer to her, more than a little tempted to unbutton her jacket and slip my hands inside to warm them up. In contrast to the cold of the room, she was so sinfully comfortable, and combined with the pheromones floating in the air, I was almost lulled to sleepiness when Ivy cleared her throat to catch my attention. Feeling stuffy enough I had to blink even after only a few minutes, I looked up to see her staring at a point behind me, and with an apologetic smile, she gave my cheek a lingering stroke with the back of her hand before reluctantly disentangling herself from me and pulling away.

"I'm sorry to cut this short, Dear Heart, but I'm afraid I have to give your seats someone else tonight." She said as her fingers fell from my skin, and opened her arms, just in time to catch her little sister in a hug. Despite her back-torturing footwear, both sisters stayed upright as Erica finished a ninja-like dash that would have toppled me straight into her arms, the younger vamp burying her face in her older sister's chest as she was protectively embraced, Ivy's softest and most delicate tone rising as I took a few steps back to give them some privacy. Unfortunately, the unthinkable happened; someone showed less tact than I did. Many someones, in fact. A whole slew of sideway glances were being cast at the sisters, intruding on what should have been a moment of family comfort.

_Well, that didn't last long..._ I growled angrily in my head as the sweet feelings Ivy had coursing through my body vanished, replaced by a dark, protective rage. I knew the sisters got the looks because Erica was technically siding with their mom and Ivy was technically her enemy, but technically, the people attending could have checked the politics at the door.

"I couldn't agree more." A gravelly voice coming from my left startled me out of my glaring. "Tonight is about comfort and closure. It isn't supposed to be about politics or picking sides, and no one here should make it so, especially if it keeps my girls apart in their time of need." Erica and Ivy's dad, Mr Randall, said with almost solemn approval before extending his hand to me, a tired and sad smile on his face.

"Whoops! Was that out loud?" I fell right off my high horse and sputtered in embarrassment. Jerkily, I took his offered hand and gave it a firm shake, though inwardly I was wincing at the once-handsome man's appearance. If Ivy had looked a bit weary a minute ago, her father looked like the weight of the world was crushing him. From tall and gangly, the man had taken on a frail and gaunt air since the last time I saw him, around the winter solstice two years ago. The strain of sustaining his beloved undead wife in this period of strife showed everywhere on him, making him look as much like a cancer patient as the husband and scion of a powerful and influential pretender to the city's throne. Despite his bond with his undead wife, he moved more like a graceful human than a living vamp, a clear indication something was very wrong with him, wrong enough for me to doubt he would have still been alive if he wasn't getting back some of that life force he gave his wife through their bond.

"Yes, I believe it was." Mr Randall said, turning his eyes to the prying vamps. He didn't even need to glare or anything, his stony stare was enough to convey how he wanted his daughters to have some privacy and it was enough to get it for them. The intruding vamps dispersed like salt dissolving in water, leaving a bubble of sisterly intimacy around my two favourite vampires.

"I don't believe I had the chance to properly thank you for what you've done for Erica." Mr Randall whispered to me, leaning forward in a conspiratorial manner. "Such a terrible thing. I'm sorry Annabelle and I can't acknowledge what you did for us publically due to the current strife, but I want you to know I will be forever grateful for helping her."

"I didn't do it alone. In fact, Ivy did the most dangerous part. She pulled Erica out of that house before it blew up, and she healed Erica's wounds." I protested quietly, blushing a bit at the man's gratitude. He made it seem like Ivy and I had saved the day somehow last week, when all we'd done was avert an absolute tragedy. I didn't feel I deserved his thanks when his elder daughter had been the one taking all the risks, and his youngest was now grieving the man she loved. "I just ran like hell and invoked the memory charm. Ivy outran a fireball with Erica in her arms. She deserves your thanks a lot more than me."

"I did thank her, profusely. I'm well aware that Ivy saved Erica's life, but you're the one who brought her mind and soul back from the brink. She had enough humility to make that much clear." Mr Randall grimaced a bit, making me wonder just what story was circulating amongst the vamp community, if Ivy was claiming all the credit. I didn't like the thought of her using what happened with her sister as a political tool to bludgeon her mother with, but I suppose this kind of distasteful political manoeuvring was at least marginally better than open street warfare. "Once we can put this tragedy behind us, Erica still has a chance to live a long and happy life thanks to you. If not for your intervention, freeing her through her first death would have been the only merciful thing to do."

_Well, when you put it like that..._ I thought, remembering her terrible glassy eyes, the memory of her empty, bloodstained face tearing at my heart. "You're welcome. I just wish we could have been fast enough to save both of them." My throat clogged up as I dared to turn my eyes to the coffin in the room for the first time. Just like I expected, the lid was closed, not even the best mortician having the skill to hide the grisly injuries of the young man within. A few people were gathered near, some deep in contemplation, others lost in prayers, and others still simply gazed emptily at the dark, massive varnished wood, their eyes black and glazed over with grief.

"We all wish this tragedy had unfolded differently, believe me." Mr Randall said as he followed my gaze. "The coroner report was clear however. Seth was already gone by the time you and Ivy got the call goading you into that trap. There's nothing more the two of you could have done." I recognised the tone he used, Ivy favouring it too whenever she needed to hide from her emotions behind logic and facts. "I'm to blame, not you. I was the one who failed to protect them."

"You couldn't have known." I protested, empathically gripping his upper arm. "None of us caught it."

"We're at war, Rachel." Mr Randal shot back. "I should never have agreed to let them go out without more protection. In fact I shouldn't have agreed to let them go out at all in the first place."

I squared myself, cocking my hip and crossing my arms in a gesture of confidence and certainty; he was wrong to beat himself up, and even though I didn't know him all that well, I didn't plan to let him go on like this.

"Yeah, that would make sense, except it's not that kind of war, is it? You know Ivy is the only opponent you have left who has the clout to dare do something like this, and you know, rightfully, that she wouldn't bat an eyelash at skinning anyone who even thinks of hurting her baby sister alive. It wasn't poor judgment to give Erica one night to be happy when she needed it so badly and the coast looked so clear." I countered firmly.

"I find it hard to believe that when a young man lies dead not fifteen feet away."

"I know, but what happened wasn't political. None of _your_ enemies did this. You said it yourself, it was a personal vendetta... and I was the target that night. If it's anyone's fault, it's mine." I finished in a murmur, feeling guilty I could only recall the vaguest impressions of the one who did this. Well, maybe I was also the teensiest bit guilty for giving in to my attraction to Ivy barely hour afterwards. I knew with all the stress, grief and sickness I had been subjected to in the past month that I was probably overdue for getting laid last week, but still... it nagged me a bit that I had consummated my relationship with Ivy while Erica was unconscious in a magically induced sleep and her traumatic memories were getting wiped from her mind. It's not that the young vamp was mad at me for blowing off steam with her older sister, but it didn't make me feel like the greatest friend in the world that I'd found my way back to Ivy at the same time she lost her own lover.

The older man held my gaze for a few seconds before sighing deeply and running his hand over his tired features, a gesture I recognised as Ivy's typical, and silent, admission of being wrong. "There's no point in casting blame, so it's all moot anyway. What happened that night was a tragedy, and no one could have stopped it. Whoever did this, I'll get him." I declared with finality, as if that made anything better, the promise of blood the sole comfort in my power to offer. I knew that our mysterious rat-sucking son of a bitch had crossed the line by harming the pupil of the vamp community's eye. Hurting shunned living vampires like Skimmer and Kisten was, as cold as it is to point out, relatively okay. It only caused ripples on a personal level, within those who cared about the person he hurt rather than the entire community. He had kicked the hornets' nest now, though, and for sure would be on everyone's radar from here on out. His days of being tolerated were done. It was only a matter of time before he got caught and dealt with, even if I didn't get my hands on him personally. It wouldn't erase what happened to Seth, Skimmer or Kisten, or even Erica's innocence, but it might give closure to a few people gathered here.

"You're right. I only lost my second son-in-law. Others here have suffered much more devastating loss than me. I suppose I have no right to feel sorry for myself." Mr Randall finally said, his eyes fixed on Erica and Ivy's back, his eldest gently guiding her young sibling towards a devastated-looking woman sitting some distance away, surrounded by sympathetic faces she didn't seem to acknowledge at all. The woman's age was hard to pin down; she had the body of a very well preserved mid-forties or early fifties woman (probably closer to the latter if she had indeed seen the Turn), but her eyes were so glazed and tired they sufficed to make her look ancient. There was not a trace of makeup on her face, and it exacerbated her flawed and pained look. Deep wrinkles of pain and weariness lined a fair face that was no doubt proud and regal in sweeter times, framed by shoulder-length, wavy brown hair that showed no hint of grey. I got the sense that at her peak, she could be a force of nature, but what was left now was hard to look upon.

I scrambled to come up with a reply and tell Mr Randall that wasn't what I meant, to protest, to reiterate he shouldn't be beating himself up, but whatever I had been about to say died before it could make it out of my mouth. I tensed and gritted my teeth as Erica made herself known, looking distinctly like a sacrificial lamb even though she was in head-to-toe black rather than virginal white and the incense in the air had little to do with plants and minerals. Everyone in the room followed suit, silence swallowing us all like an outgoing wave, the vampires all feeling the change in the air. I don't know if I'd started it, but every pair of eyes in the room found the source of the mounting tension, gazing expectantly at the two women.

"Mrs Anderson?" I guessed, thinking it didn't take a PhD to figure out the child who survived was about to face the mother of the one who didn't.

"In person." Mr Randall answered soberly. "The poor woman. Between her deceased husband and the situation with her daughter, Seth was all she had left."

"How is she handling it?" I asked reluctantly, feeling callous but doing so anyway. I had one avowed reason to be here, and that reason was Erica. I wanted a little advance notice if the grieving mother was going to try and claw my equally grieving friend's eyes out.

"She is a strong woman, and she's no stranger to grief." Mr Randall answered vaguely, probably referring to the aforementioned loss of her husband. The same worried considerations appeared to be running through the man's head, giving him an even darker look than before.

"Losing a child is a lot of grief, even for the strongest women."

"Granted, but Erica was as much a daughter to her as Seth and Kisten were sons to me." Against, I winced inwardly. So much death in the past few months for the vampires of Cinci...

"Would that still be worth something to you if it was Seth or Kist that survived, and Erica or Ivy in that coffin?" I wondered rhetorically. The women were facing each other, Erica wholly meek and ashamed, Mrs Anderson looking stunned and pained as she received her ex daughter-in-law's sympathies. I fervently hoped that the answer to that question was yes. "Please tell me this isn't the first time they've seen each other since Seth died?" The vampire beside me nodded direly. "Great..." Unconsciously, I flexed my knees a fraction, letting my body get looser and my balance lower, just in case Mrs Anderson snapped and I had to dash for the vamps. Ivy was a lot closer, a lot faster and a lot more capable of separating the two preternaturally strong women if it came to that, but go tell that to my hyperactive protective instincts...

"Karin..." Erica began chokingly in the sudden, thick silence. The poor girl couldn't even meet the older woman's dead-eyed stare. "I... I'm so sorry for your loss. Seth was a good... good..." She wavered. Whatever she was about to say, whatever condolences she was about to offer, she couldn't push them out. The words could have been made of razor wire and she wouldn't have looked more pained to say them. "He was such a nice guy. He didn't deserve this, and I'm sorry I'm still here. I'm so sorry I made it and he couldn't."

The unwarranted guilt in the young girl's admission washed through my veins like a splash of rotten garbage, leaving me with a sour aftertaste in mouth. Ivy had to think so too, because as soon as her little sister said it, her hand gently gripped the young vampire's slender shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. Every gaze in the room shifted from her to Mrs Anderson, the tension cranking up even further every second her reply wasn't forthcoming.

"Erica, please, don't say these things. Your survival is the only bright spot in all this darkness." Seth's mom whispered in a deadened voice that held no more strength for tears and screams. Her eyes, though red, puffy and heavily bagged, were dry for the moment, their black pupils glazed and dull. I couldn't even guess what colour they were normally, they were so dilated. "It wouldn't bring Seth back if you had died along with him. He would never want... you meant the world to him, Erica. He loved you so much. I know that seeing you hurt would be the last thing he wanted to see."

My throat clogging up, I had to try twice before I managed to swallow the knot of anguish and heartache choking me. That was the un-avowed reason why I was here; guilt, warranted guilt, that I couldn't save Seth, no more that I could save Kisten, or prevent Skimmer's rape. Guilt that I had forgotten everything that could help me and others find whoever was responsible and deal him the punishment he deserved. I didn't really believe in mob justice, but seeing Erica now, I was feeling very willing to make an exception for a special someone who put in so much effort to deserve getting killed by fire.

All the tension in the room bled away in the instant Erica and Mrs Anderson collapsed into each other's arms, their sobs and sorrow mixing in perfect, soul-rending unison; a few joined their tears to the grieving mother and lover, others more rowdy types clenched their fists in silent vows of bloody vengeance, others like me simply sagged a bit in bittersweet relief the two women found each other in their grief rather than tear each other apart with it.

_I guess that answers that question..._ I was profoundly relieved to realise, glad to see that extended family still meant something in this place, even in the face of tragedy. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for actual blood relations, at least not amongst those who came back from death rather than letting it hold them. Without having to see her, I could tell Mrs Tamwood was somewhere in the vicinity and she wasn't happy about something, partly because I could feel someone's hunting aura skimming about mine, partly because Ivy reacted like a pissed-off cat when it began to grate around her. From Erica's back, Ivy's eyes flew across the room like an arrow in flight, planting itself into her mother's glaring face, the twin almond shaped brown eyes narrowing and hardening.

"For the love of blood, girls, this isn't the time." Mr Randall muttered, having noticed the ongoing stare-down between the two Tamwood women. We were apparently the only ones who did; I suppose he had privileged access to Mrs Tamwood's mind, and I was the only one sensitive to vampires to such a degree.

"What the heck is their problem?" I asked, debating whether I should tackle Ivy to the floor before she flew across the room at her mom's throat. I didn't want to believe she would do that here, of all places, but there was some bad blood between the two of them, and maybe something more. Now was not the time to stand aside and hope for the best.

"It's obvious their protective instincts are competing. I had hoped this wouldn't happen..."

"Over Erica? Why would their-"

"Rachel, I'd love to give you the detailed breakdown of every protective instinct Erica falls under to the two of them, but don't you think we should head this off before they come to blows, first?" Mr Randall cut me off. "I'm Annabelle's scion. Given a minute alone with her, I can calm her down. Meanwhile you're the closest equivalent for Ivy. I'll take my wife for a walk outside the building, at the main entrance. Get Reed and Heidi to find a quiet spot for the two of you as far away as you can." He instructed me, giving me a glimpse of his eldest daughter in the sure way he took charge, formulating a plan on the go. "Try and give her enough to keep her composed for a few hours, but don't compromise your alertness too much. You might have a long night ahead." He finished in a weary sigh, though I wasn't quite sure what he meant for me to do.

"Huh, the witch is lost here." I admitted to him before he left, my eyebrows scrunching up in confusion. "Give her what?"

"Well... blood, of course." Mr Randall said like I was missing the most obvious thing in the world. "Those are her bite marks on your neck, right?"

"R-right! Right, of course they are! Who else's would they be?" I lied, suddenly incredibly nervous, my knees turning into something that made jell-o look like concrete. Stake me now, I'd been so focused on Ivy flipping out about the blood balance with Erica, I'd completely forgotten about the rest of her family. Mr Randall already didn't like me much, but, I was too close to both his girls for him not to feel incredibly threatened by me. I might not have had a father to screen jerks growing up, but even I recognised the signs of a scolding father the first time I met him. Probably thanks to my species since he looked completely okay with Ivy dating Skimmer, I got the feeling back then I was not high on his list of favourite potential romantic interests for his big girl. And like I said, Mommy Tamwood probably was none too fond of me to start with either, for keeping her grand-childless despite her explicit wishes back when my lover could still bear children. Learning of the arrangement Erica and I had was sure to bump her dislike up to homicidal hatred, if the glares she was shooting her own flesh-and-blood for simply hugging her own sister were any indication. God, what was I thinking, letting Erica bite me? Oh, right, she was grieving the love of her life and in desperate need of closeness and comfort at the time. A guaranteed comfort if her family ever decided to have me for dinner... literally.

_I helped save their youngest, didn't I? It should at least buy me unconsciousness when they cram me into the oven..._ I thought flippantly... or was that wistfully? There were obvious reasons for vamps to like their meals rare rather than well done, and feisty rather than (mercifully) dead. Gulp.

"You expect me to bare my neck to Ivy _in here_?" I asked, fidgeting with my scarf to try and appear like it was the 'public' that bothered me, not that the thought of letting a vampire sink her fangs into my neck in a semi-public setting was all that enticing...

"I have means to temporarily soothe Annabelle's mood, but without being bound to Ivy as her scion, her current mindset may be beyond your ability to influence." Just like that, the last of our earlier rapport vanished, his mannerism becoming coldly polite, bordering on abrupt. There was the disapproving father I'd first met months ago, probably convinced I'd had a blood tryst with another vamp behind Ivy's back, because he didn't look like he bought those were her marks for one second. Minus the tryst part, he wasn't far from the truth, but I didn't want my father-in-law thinking I'd cheated on Ivy like that anyway. "Letting Ivy taste you is a sure way to divert her attention and help her cope with the stress of being near her mother. Look, if you think you know a way to calm her down, you're welcome to try, but please make it fast and as foolproof as possible."

_I'm going to start with a stern talking-to and see if I should escalate to cheap sex in the restroom from there, thank you very much..._ I rolled my eyes at the disapproving man's back, watching him nearly warp to his wife's side and embrace her petite body with firm affection, attempting to direct her further away from Ivy before Erica and the other onlookers caught on to the very hostile stare down contest going on in their midst. At a more normal pace, I did the same for Ivy, though I was met with far less satisfactory results, Mrs Tamwood having almost gladly accepted her husband's familiar, loving touch, while Ivy...

"What?" The vampire snapped at me as I drew near, without taking her stormy eyes off her mother, even as I put what should have been a distracting arm around her waist. I'd hoped the display of affection would have caught her attention, but I had to snap my fingers at her just to get her to look at me, and when she did she was almost surprised to see me standing before her looking disapproving, as if she had no idea what she was doing wrong and how devastating it could be for her little sister to realise what open hostility was passing between her mother and sister.

"Did I imagine you promising this crap wouldn't happen this afternoon?" I reminded her with terse sweetness, stealing a glance at Mr Randall to see if he was managing his own beloved. The older undead seemed to positively melt against him, almost docilely allowing herself to be taken away from their daughters in a show of influence I didn't think possible in a master-scion relationship.

"I didn't do anything. She started it." Ivy pointed out in a way that might have seemed childish if she were anyone but her dark, sexy and dangerous vampire self. As it was, she sounded more murderous than anything else.

"What is this, grade school?" I asked as I pressed myself closer into her personal space, demonstrating I wouldn't back down. "I didn't ask who started, I asked if I imagined you promising you would be the bigger woman tonight. Because that, babe? That was not you being the bigger woman."

With a proud huff, Ivy shrugged me off (much less violently than she was capable of seeing as I wasn't flattened against the nearest wall) and began pacing a few steps away, her eyes going from me to her sister hugging her former mother-in-law to their mom momentarily leaving the room to get some fresh air outside. She looked distinctly like a pissed cat again, restless and wary but too proud to run away.

"Take a witchy break?" I spoke more softly now that she had accepted to stand down from her fighting mindset, though she didn't look particularly huggable right now. I wouldn't donate blood if I could help it, but I didn't mind using my scent again to calm her down, and so it was a steady hand I offered her.

"I'm fine." She growled instantly, eying me in a way that warned me to stay away. "Just... give me a second to breathe."

"Ivy, come on." I persisted despite her terse manners, swallowing back my own huff of annoyance. I didn't care how great her mom's gift at getting under her skin was, I was no one's punching bag, not even hers... but I'd help her let go of some of her frustration if it kept Erica from getting caught in their crossfire. "Let's go for a walk together, let tempers cool. Getting all prissy isn't gonna make anyone's night better."

I moved to take her hand and lead her out, but with a rumble of infuriation she vanished right before my eyes, leaving me to shake my head and hope wherever she was storming off to she would properly cool off before coming back. I had a feeling she wasn't angry at me or her mom as much as herself by now. If what Mr Randal had said and her instincts were acting up, then she was probably ashamed of it, which would lead to her seeking isolation to get herself together as far away from prying eyes as possible. It felt like a lifetime since we did, but it was a comfortingly familiar, if bittersweet, sight, a behaviour she had exhibited frequently ever since we began sharing the same roof. Familiar or not, I still sighed and shook my head at her absent self, still wistful that she would someday let me come close enough to help her with her instincts. For a second I almost felt envious of Mr Randall and the ease with which he could help his wife through tense times, before I reminded myself he was bound to her much more tightly than I was ever going to allow myself to be with Ivy.

Without Ivy and Mr Randall around to delay it further, I mustered all the courage I could and walked up to the grieving mother. She and Erica had split up for the moment, and when the young vamp's puffy eyes settled on me she discreetly gestured for me to come closer.

"Karin, this is my friend Rachel." Erica, her voice hoarse from crying, introduced me. "Rachel, this is Karin Anderson, Seth's mom."

"My sympathies." I murmured awkwardly to the older woman, taking her hand to give it a gentle squeeze. It was cold and nearly limp, by far the weakest grasp I'd ever seen a vampire display. "I didn't have a chance to get to know Seth very well, but I've heard only good things. I'm so sorry for your loss."

"Thank you." Mrs Anderson answered without much conviction, the reflexes of a no doubt very social woman kicking in despite her grief. "I know that a witch's age can be difficult to gauge, so I'm sorry to ask, but you are at least a few years older than Erica, are you not?"

"Hum, that's right." I acknowledged. With a hundred and sixty year lifespan, I knew we witches and warlocks tended to look younger longer once we were into our twenties, a phenomenon that was further compounded by my practice of demon magic, which reset all the wear and tear I had put on my body. I was twenty-six to Erica's seventeen, but I only looked a little bit older, not nearly a decade older. "It was Ivy that introduced us. I'm her partner, her business partner." I hurriedly added, though Ivy and I had left that phase of our relationship far behind us in a tangle of limbs and cries of ecstasy; still, no need to confirm those rumours Reed had talked about...

"Then you are... Rachel Morgan?" She asked before narrowing her eyes at me, recognition darkening her features with something more sinister than surprise. "_The_ Rachel Morgan? The one who testified against Piscary? The one who was present at the moment of his death?"

"Hum... The same?" I said hesitantly, put off by the disapproval in the older vampire's tone. In my experience, two things can put a fire back in a grieving person's eye; one is the relief of joy, the other is the distraction of anger. I knew I hadn't done anything to cause her joy. "I don't mean to be rude, but what is it to you? Piscary wasn't exactly an upstanding citizen."

"I'm sure you deluded yourself into believing you accomplished something grand by speeding up his downfall." She stated dully. "I beg to differ. Under his leadership we prospered for years. I stand firm that you've caused us more harm than good by removing him."

_Oh, great. A sympathiser of the old master. Just my freaking luck she's one of those..._ I thought, cursing fate's twisted sense of humour in consternation. I had a hard time figuring how a mother of two could take Piscary's side over mine. For the love of god, Ivy was younger than Seth the first time he touched her. No mother in her right mind could defend that kind of sick bastard.

"Piscary was nothing but a twisted motherf- murderer." I managed to rein in my dirty mouth, barely, but failed to stop my temper from snapping at her. I did a lot of things I (and a fair share of city) considered morally ambiguous, but arresting Piscary was most definitely not one of them, and I wasn't about to let anyone question this one grim but righteous accomplishment of mine. "He had who knows how many of my kind killed in the last months of his life, and he hurt people that are dear to me gratuitously. I'm sorry, but the world _is_ a better place without him."

"I will never argue that he was a monster, and I may have admired you for what you did no later than a week ago, but I've come to realise he was a monster that kept his people safe. Never in a thousand years would he have allowed this fate to befall my son. His death can be laid at your feet."

_She's grieving, not her fault, she's grieving, not her fault, she's grieving..._ I repeated over and over in my head in hopes of reminding myself she was assigning blame, my fists and jaw nonetheless clenching in anger at Mrs Anderson's recriminations. She was partly right. As much as I had wanted Piscary dead for what he did to Ivy, Kisten and my father, I wasn't the one to do the deed; in fact I'd been attempting to parlay with him before our little meeting went tits up. Despite hating him more than anyone else in my acquaintance, I understood how deep his power base had been here, how he was a stabilising element for years, and I'd been hoping to take advantage of that to save those I loved. Skimmer had been the one striking the killing blow, in order to save Ivy's life. It didn't change the fact she was right and I had played a role in Seth's untimely demise. I'd just done it by antagonising his killer somehow, and not the way Mrs Anderson thought.

"We're going to have to agree to disagree, ma'am." My voice dropped, most of its warmth vanishing. "I know enough about his actions to make no apologies for what I did. It was only chance that made someone else's children his victims rather than yours. You were one cosmic dice roll away from having your own flesh and blood be warped and twisted for his enjoyment."

"He took his tribute amongst his people, as was his right, but he fulfilled his duties in exchange. He never tolerated degenerates like the one who did this to my boy." She sniffled, her ire dying down a bit as she spoke and her grief overtook her once more though her recriminations were still plain as day. "If it wasn't for your interference in our affairs, Seth would still be here."

_My interferences? I didn't plunge head-first into your world, I was shoved into it. Thanks to a demon pervert and his bastard undead summoner, I never had a choice to get involved or not. And besides, you're wrong, whoever he is, Piscary made a deal with him, to contact a demon to wreak havoc on Cinci. He not only tolerated him, he worked with your son's killer, and he gave him someone else's life as a thank-you gift, like he was his best fucking buddy. _

There was enough compassion left in me to hold my tongue and let her blame me as her scapegoat. My eyes stinging a bit at the memory of Kisten and my responsibility in this latest affair, I decided to stop being a hypocrite and drop it. "I'm sorry for your loss." I repeated, my head lowering in a short, humble bow before I took a step back, figuratively and physically backing down. "I wish things could be different, but I can't change them. I did the best I could under the circumstances. I'll try to stay out of your way tonight."

Not waiting around for a reply or further accusations from the grieving mother, I turned around and decided I should go for a walk too. Though I felt their gazes on me I met none of the present vampires' eyes as I exited, worried I'd see more disapproving or even baleful glares. Their whispers surrounded me, isolating me even I was the subject on everyone's lips now. I usually felt mostly at home amongst inderlanders, even if they were of another species; here, I suddenly got the feeling I was less welcome than a xenophobic evangelising zealot proclaiming Seth's well earned eternal damnation.

_I did the right thing, damnit! I did the damn best I could. I did._

"Rache?" I spent a few bleak minutes blindly strolling up and down the warmer hall, rubbing some heat back into my limbs, before Erica's soft voice gently pulled me out of my angry ruminations. "I'm sorry about that. I swear Karin didn't really mean what she said."

"I understand, kid. No worries." I responded a little too tightly to be convincing, my smile looking more like a grimace than anything genuine. "She's entitled to her opinions. I guess I bumped into a few issues hard enough to shake them loose in my time." It's not like I ever meant to be such a shaker in the Inderland underworld. In fact I was pretty much stumbling blindly in the dark, just trying to stay alive and not to bump into something big and hungry enough to eat me.

"You're not leaving over this, are you?" She inquired so worriedly that even if I had been, she would have turned me back around right then and there.

"Nah, of course not." I reassured my young friend more earnestly. "I promised I'd see you through this evening, didn't I? I've got thicker skin than this. Thicker skull too. She's gonna have to spell it out with a loud speaker if she wants me gone. Then there's the problem of my selective hearing..."

"Thank you. Karin's a good woman, but she can be harsh, and losing Seth like this..." The young woman quivered, her eyes scrunching shut briefly. "It's making her more conservative than usual. Don't think everyone in there resents you for what you did to Piscary. I'm so not sorry he's gone."

"I didn't expect to meet her at her best, today of all days." I retorted dryly. "Sweetie, I took a low blow, but I'm okay, really. You shouldn't be worrying about me tonight."

"I've got other friends who'd like to meet you, if you want." Erica offered kindly. "I promise they're not going to give you the evil eye like Karin did."

"Be a pleasure." I nodded and let Erica lead me back into the room, steering us clear of Mrs Anderson and her entourage and straight into a tightly knit group of young vamps about her age. No sooner had we reached them that the young men and women protectively surrounded Erica, one or two of them touching her in turn. It was touching to see gentle, comforting hands laid upon the young grieving vamp, soothing her need for contact as if it was the most natural thing in the world to them, even though many of them didn't look much better than Erica did. There was chatter, reminiscing, even the odd joke or anecdote that managed to tear a chuckle from the assembled gathering, all of it revolving around the dearly departed young man. Most importantly, though, there was warmth here, true, solid, human warmth, enough to stave off even Erica's heartbreak. Some young folks left us, others joined in, and I gladly met them all, surprised to see most of them were very up-to-date on my latest misadventures, and most of them didn't seem terrified of me so much as healthily respectful, if not downright amused. It was quite the breath of fresh air for me after the way Cincinnati at large had been giving me the evil eye lately.

The only friend of Erica's I didn't get to meet was the ever elusive Melissa. She was pointed out to me in the crowd, but always she was deep in conversation with those attending or otherwise simply unapproachable. From a distance I found the family resemblance with Seth rather obvious. Melissa was not as strikingly beautiful, or perhaps it would be fairer to say she didn't look as predatory, as some vampire women I met, but that didn't mean much; I didn't expect anyone to look their best at their younger siblings' funeral, and vamp beauty standards were so ludicrously lofty anyway, I didn't blame her for looking less the part of the blood-drinking goddess and more that of a beautiful but mourning mortal. She was still gorgeous. Unlike Seth she was petite but perfectly proportioned, pale of hair and, like most vampires, fair of skin, her shoulder-length blond tresses soft and artfully curling around an angular and very feminine face. Her complexion was paler, but she had the same hazel eyes as her younger brother, though his had been filled with a lively and compassionate passion for his beloved girlfriend, and not slightly dulled by grief and fatigue. She still looked alert and sharp, and gave me the impression of a smart and headstrong woman very little could keep down, an impression further reinforced by a black suit clearly tailored for her.

A while later Ivy walked back in with Heidi in tow, not looking like she wanted to rip out the first throat she saw open, but not in a playful or even good enough mood to try and make me jump again either. Though she got relatively enthusiastic greetings from Erica's friends I got the feeling she was joining _me_ more than the rest of them. Quietly, she strolled straight to my side and took my hand, deciding she wanted to play that old "ignore the problems and pretend they don't exist" game we got so good at living together and attempting to maintain untenable lines between us. I gave her digits a squeeze and played right along. It wasn't any more of a real solution now than it was in the past two years, but it had kept together on many occasions. Talking about what happened with her mom could wait until Erica wasn't within earshot, or better yet not within the same city...

I kept Ivy company for a while as she navigated us around the room, exchanging a few words with some, greeting others in, offering condolences left and right. Ivy was at ease in a way I had never witnessed on her part before, exchanging social graces and handling conversations and niceties like a fish in water. I was probably proclaiming my allegiance by shadowing her that way, but what was I supposed to do, stand in a corner on my own? I didn't want to be involved, but I wanted to stand alone in a room filled with vamps less. Fortunately for me, it wasn't long before a middle-aged man in a gray suit, a were if his short, stocky stature, deep and beautiful voice and body language that showed no empathic effects from the charge of emotions in the air, announced it would now be time to proceed to the burial proper, once a few attending people said a few words. Not all that surprisingly, it was Melissa that stepped forward first, coming to stand before her little brother's coffin with a look of dignified heartbreak on her face, her strength of character rolling off her like an outgoing wave despite her grief. A tall, strongly built man with close-cropped light brown, nearly blond hair and a neat round goatee adorning strong masculine features came to stand behind her, placing a large supporting hand on her shoulder. Amongst all these vampires, the witch stood out nearly as much as I did, and with the way he acted towards Melissa it wasn't hard to guess this had to be Carson.

"I had a speech scribbled somewhere for tonight," Melissa began, her voice a little scratchy and raw despite of her assurance, "something to try and remember the good times, to try and look back on Seth's life and all the joy and life he brought us. Honestly, looking back on them those words just seem to fail me now. They can't offer comfort. My little brother's life was snuffed out before it could even begin. I could recall every good memory I have of him, and it wouldn't change the fact there should have been so many more of them. I could sing his praise until the sun goes out, and it still wouldn't push back the untimely end of his song. Seth was robbed from me, from us. No mere words can change that. They can't sugar coat it, they can't cast a different light on it. Words can't fix my broken heart, or yours." The vamp had her audience captivated, but her eyes were fixed on Erica, standing nearby in the first row, communing with her through that last sentence.

"If words can't give me solace, however, I will say that your presence here, all of you, does give me a measure of comfort. Every one of you who knows me knows what I stand for. Some of you share my views, others don't. Some of you are standing shoulder to shoulder with those who threw their lots with your enemies. We all know what terrible conflict is raging outside these civilised settings, and I want you to know that I appreciate it. I appreciate you putting aside your differences long enough to lay my brother to rest. We may be divided in our opinions and convictions, but I can't tell you how grateful I am that you could put those divisions aside and show that when tragedy strikes, we are still able to face it, as one people. Thank you."

A few others talked once Melissa left the spotlight, but I didn't remember much of anything other than the heartfelt thanks Seth's sister had given the assembled vamps. I didn't know any of those who spoke, and it may be callous but they didn't intrigue me the way Melissa did, so I rested my head on Ivy's shoulder and moulded my body against her side, just soaking in the warmth she was giving off for my benefit and trying to keep a lid on my emotions. Eventually all was said and done, and the vampires filed out of the room in nearly complete silence, as vamps tend to do. Ivy left my side to join her father, mother and three other people whose name I couldn't recall around the casket, the six of them effortlessly hoisting it up and carrying it out. I joined back up with Erica since her parents had left her to escort her boyfriend to his final resting place, and we fell into step right behind them, Melissa and Carson flanking us in silence. I caught the vampire woman's eye for a second, a curious glint emerging momentarily from their black, glazed depths. I got the feeling she wanted to say something to me, but she didn't address me other than the brief eye contact we had. Maybe I could introduce myself later, if she joined the reception.

The funeral home was adjacent to the cemetery, so it was a relatively short and uneventful walk from there to the open grave readied for Seth's final repose, at least for most people involved. For me, well, I had to compose with an increasingly tense and nervous vampire clinging desperately to my side as we grew nearer, a situation I could see mirrored to my right in Melissa and her boyfriend. Two vampires clawing desperately at their witch friends, on their way to burying a loved one; not even Jenks would have been able to come up with an off-coloured smart-ass remark from that premise. Still, neither of them lost their nerves on the way. They didn't keep their heads high and their bearings regal out of sheer stubborn pride like Mrs Anderson did at the front of the procession (I'll admit as frigid as my feelings towards her were, she impressed me there), but they managed to keep their cool until the coffin was hung over the grave and the time came for the final goodbyes. Even through that Erica stayed strong, in behaviour if not in words, whatever she said to her departed lover too quiet for me to make it out from the respectful distance we all gave her once Mrs Anderson and Melissa had their turns.

No, it wasn't until that coffin holding the man dearest to her was lowered into the ground, the few symbolic handfuls of dirt were thrown upon it and the final words were said that, under the weight of her grief and her guilt, her composure shattered completely. She'd been doing so well that I lowered my guard, confident by now she was strong enough to get through the rest of this ordeal without constant coddling from me, Ivy or their parents, and I realised my mistake too late. The entire procession was on the way out, with the two of us trailing at the rear, Erica taking one last look back at the part of herself she was leaving behind, when she snapped at the sight of the coffin disappearing in the embrace of the earth. Whether it was the sight of Seth leaving her forever or just the accumulated strain of the past hours that caused her to break is really anyone's guess, but like she couldn't stand the thought of leaving him behind for good, Erica rushed to the edge of the hole like a woman possessed, wailing and sobbing her heart out, begging the men working on the final step of the burial to stop. She'd moved with every ounce of vampiric speed she could muster, and so left me and just about everyone else far behind eating her dust. My heart gave a painful thump, its beating quickly speeding up to match the hammering of my feet nearly skidding on the gravel path. My shoes were woefully inadequate for running, but even in sneakers I doubt I would have managed to reach Erica before Ivy materialised by her side, lowering herself to her sister's height and wrapping her into a protective embrace Erica instinctively attempted to shrug off. If it wasn't for her big sister wrapped around her, the poor girl looked like she would have followed the man she loved into his grave.

"I can't... I can't let him go, V!" I heard Erica wail despite Ivy's comforting embrace as I frantically drew closer, along with several other nosey vampires. "It's too hard. I can't do it. I'm not strong enough."

"Shh. That's nonsense, Rica. You are strong, you've always been, even when you were just a little girl. I know it. You know it, too. You can do this."

"No I'm not. I'm not strong enough, I'm not strong at all! I can't. I can't. I can't say goodbye, I just can't..." The young vampire... babbled, I suppose, if babbling can make the death of Bambi's mother look like slapstick humour in a Saturday morning cartoon.

"Just let go. I've got you, baby. Just let go." Ivy whispered over and over, her hands gently covering her little sister's, just hinting at tugging at their white-knuckled grip on the mechanical armature still tenuously linking the coffin to the world of the living. "You have to let him go, Rica. That's it." She murmured encouragingly as her baby sister began to do just that, every pair of eyes in their immediate vicinity bolted to her slowly loosening fingers. Each millimetre seemingly costing her unbearable agony, Erica pulled her hand away and let go, turning around in her sister's arms to return her embrace, gripping my lover tightly, like she was the only thing that would keep the young vampire from imploding under the strain of her grief.

"I miss him, V. God, I miss him so much... It's like a piece of me was ripped out. It hurts so much... I don't how I'm supposed to keep going now that he's gone."

"One day at a time." Ivy said, echoing my previous advice. "I've been where you are, and trust me, you're doing _so_ well. You won't forget him overnight, but you can move on, little by little. You've just put the first step behind you. You just need to keep walking now. There, there. I'm here." Her firm, gentle voice became soft and compassionate as Erica's sobs overtook her, and she planted a long, steady kiss upon her little sister's temple. "I'm here."

There was beauty in the scene. Not the kind of beauty that brings a smile to one's lips, but the kind that ties up your throat, makes your eyes sting and your stomach knot with feelings you don't know how to name. For one second, all of the lingering doubts I had about Ivy simply melted away. Was she perfect, other than physically of course? No, but in that moment I could glimpse there was something, someone, in there worth fighting for, despite all her flaws. I felt my desperate resolve to hold on to her grow exponentially... just as a feeling of déjà-vu began to creep up on me, and the temperature dropped for reasons that had nothing to do with wind chill. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed what I'd been dreading.

Mrs Tamwood was standing a few yards behind me, and I had no trouble recognising the air about her, having seen it several times on my roommate. She was angry, to put it mildly.

"You have no rights touching her. Take your hands off my daughter." Ivy's mom demanded imperiously, glaring at her firstborn child like she was her worst enemy and not her own blood. Those didn't have to be mutually exclusive if the murderous look Ivy gave her in response was any indication...

"_Your_ daughter happens to be _my_ sister, Mother." Ivy hissed back almost possessively, refusing to relinquish her grip on Erica; almost defiantly, she cradled her closer to her chest, forcing the younger vamp away from their mom's sight. "She and I are the same blood. Maybe it slipped your decrepit mind, but by law, I have just as much claim to her as you do."

"Mom, V, please, this isn't the time..." Erica spoke weakly, her eyes going from her mother to her sister, imploring them to calm down. I guess vamp hearing is selective in addition to being sharp, because neither vampire seemed to acknowledge her soft spoken plea to stand down. Without regard for her frailer frame, her mom took hold of the young living vamp with an iron grip, tugging her closer out of the comforting circle of Ivy's arms. The elder daughter didn't relent either; in fact she got pulled right along with her sister and straight into their mother's face. Ivy's lips pulled back in a snarl that bared her fangs at the slight, and two pairs of nearly identical cinnamon eyes turned into four pools of chilling hellfire, both women squaring themselves in challenge. It looked like the two undeads were about to play tug o'war with the young vampire between them, and the fact no one was stepping up to do anything about it set my blood boiling. All the gathered vampires here answered either to Ivy or Annabelle, and all of them had been brought up to stay clear of their masters' quarrels unless clearly instructed to get involved. Even Melissa was standing on the sidelines with helpless fury in her ebony eyes, her hands clenched and quivering at her sides in helplessness. Every one of them would just watch while the two undead destroyed the very fragile, wonderful girl they were fighting over.

Well, I wasn't a goddamn vamp, and I'd given Erica my word no one would hurt her as long as I was around; even her relatives fell under the umbrella of "not a freaking soul in this world or the next". If Ivy thought sleeping with me once meant I wouldn't whoop her ass up to her shoulder blades for this bullshit, she had another thing coming. As for her terrifying mom? Fuck it, I could be scared of her on the weekend.

_Twice? Not just once, but twice? For fuck's sake, you stupid cookie, I had your word this shit wouldn't happen _at all_!_ I thought in a blind rage, taking a first step towards the burgeoning clusterfuck, ready to knock some sense into a duo of stupid undeads with nothing but my own little white fists, and who cares that they could throw me halfway across the cemetery using only their pinkies. Yeah, I are totally smart. Ask me if I care. I dare you.

Someone obviously cared enough to stop me, because a firm hand landed on my shoulder, stopping me before I could throw myself into the fray. "I truly can't recommend doing that." A female voice sounding just barely familiar warned from behind me. "This is a vampire family matter. Intervening will only land you in the hospital."

"Like hell..." I didn't need to know who she was to be annoyed by her interruption. Impulsively, I wrapped my fingers around my thumb to make a fist and whirled around, pissed enough to slug whoever was sensibly trying to stop me from going postal on the undeads' asses. I was stopped dead in my tracks when I recognised her, my mouth dropping open in complete bewilderment. Long, dark hair pulled into a high ponytail, sharp features most models would kill for, calm and piercing leaf green eyes, subdued, unobtrusive black clothing covering a tall, lean and athletic body, no jewellery save for a raw, dark red stone hanging from a silver chain around her long, slender neck marked with rows of carefully given vampire scars forming a design too elegant to be anything but premeditated...

"You?" I hissed angrily at Angel, my eyes narrowing and my brow furrowing in hostility momentarily diverted from Ivy and her mom. "What the hell are you doing here?"

What the hell was Nathalie's elven Scion doing at a funeral in Cincinnati indeed?

"This is no time for the two of us to make even more of a scene." The rogue Guardian answered me in a low voice, slowly shaking her head with a guarded expression... no pun intended. "Ask Ivy or find me later for your answers, but for now, please do not interfere. This matter does not concern you. Let it unfold to its conclusion. Erica doesn't need you, or anyone else, right now."

"Like hell she doesn't! Look at her! Who are you to say she doesn't need help?" I yelled in her face, violently shrugging off the hand she put on my shoulder. Strangely enough, no one seemed to notice the hysterical witch screaming her head off right in front of them; the elf had to be doing something to isolate us from the rest of the people gathered around the open grave.

"Someone who found strength in her grief before." The woman answered calmly, my temper slipping over her like water off a duck's back. "She is stronger than you give her credit for. Let her realise it. You will do her no favour by acting otherwise." Angel began to meld back into the gathered crowd, a peculiar distortion running over her. The pull of magical energies on a nearby line tugged on my senses, and in a blink, Angel became completely unnoticeable. I couldn't point to one single thing the spell changed of her appearance, but when she briefly looked back at me, I somehow couldn't recognise her anymore. Something in my brain simply didn't click anymore; if I hadn't factually known who she was under the cover of her spell, I never would have blinked crossing her on the street.

_An obscuration charm..._, I thought, impressed despite myself with the magical prowess of the elven woman. The indifference of the others to her presence and my yelling suddenly made a lot more sense. A_nd she didn't even break a sweat manipulating it silently either. Damn, she's good._ Then again, I shouldn't be surprised she displayed such extreme proficiency. The woman had been ready to go toe-to-toe with Ceri, the third most powerful magic user I knew after Al and Newt, and she was the number one servant of one of the most powerful creatures walking this earth. She definitely didn't get that last job by being a second rate spellslinger...

"Wh- Hey! Come back here!" I shouted after Angel before I lost sight of her, earning myself a few startled and sideway glances from the onlookers who maintained a more reasonable distance from the family scene unfolding before them. I probably would have run after the woman if it wasn't for Ivy and her mom snapping at each other; I had been kind of looking forward to never seeing Angel and Nathalie again, and I was anxious to know why this simple wish of mine had been denied... "At least tell me your bitch of a mistress isn't around!" Bad days could always get worse, something I had experienced time and again, and the ancient vampire goddess ('master vamp' seemed too mild at this point; I'd seen master vamps more times than I cared for, and Nathalie could eat them all for breakfast) would make _any_ day infinitely worse. The beautiful elf paused briefly to look back at me, her face set in obvious offence, her eyes hooded in displeasure, and curtly shook her head once before completely vanishing from view.

_So she's here, and without Nathalie to boot. It's not that I mind that last tidbit, but what the hell?_ I wondered worriedly, still managing to be relieved the ancient vampire the rogue elven Guardian answered to wasn't around; for lack of proof, I had to take her at her word, but Angel didn't strike me as the lying type. Considering I had the same kind of grudging respect for her counterpart Quen, who also happened to be serving someone I was none too fond of, I figured inspiring it was a Guardian thing...

_But I'm getting off track here... where was I? Oh yeah, the undead Jerry Springer Show..._ I shook my head and pushed my thoughts of the Guardian to the periphery of my mind, turning my attention back to the pair of undead jackasses and Erica. I wasn't exactly surprised that the two contenders for the city's throne hadn't resolved their differences during the three seconds I'd taken my eyes off them. They were still arguing, both of them oblivious to the ravages their petty bickering caused on the quivering girl they fought over. Something was off, though, and not just because I wasn't running like hell when there were two undead vamps ripping each other apart verbally a few feet away. Both of them were focusing on each other at the exclusion of everything and everyone else, their hunting auras clashing so violently the air smelled like the aftermath of a thunderstorm, yet I was still feeling like a vamp was pulling a mild aura _on me_. A quick look around revealed no vamps getting (particularly) worked up or focusing their attention on me, yet I could definitely feel the familiar sensation of beguiling cold begin to creep up on the edges of my consciousness.

"We have you to thank for this lovely gathering here today, Mother." Ivy snarled in a biting and sarcastic tone. "You and Father failed to keep Seth and Erica safe. If it wasn't for my intervention, we'd be burying both of them today. I rescued her, not you."

"Do not downplay your responsibility, girl! You're the one who caused the chaos this city has fallen into in the first place. Without your interference, we would still present a united front, and our children would be in no danger from degenerate outcasts." The elder Tamwood scoffed, dark viciousness oozing from her lips. "But what else can I expect from you? You disappointed every hope I ever placed in you. I asked one thing of you, to bear the next Tamwood heir, yet you squandered even that! You preferred to give in to your promiscuity, take a different man, or even woman, to your bed each night rather than conceive the child that was expected of you! Truly, how can someone who failed so completely in her duties in life have the gall to try and lead us in death?"

"Oh, you don't get to do both, Mother! You either spurn me, or you play the disappointed mom, not both! If you think..."

It wasn't until she started screaming that I realised that strange vampire aura nagging at my senses came from Erica's diminutive body...

"Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it! STOP IT!" The young vampire screeched at the top of her lungs, the sound echoing loudly in the suddenly deathly silent cemetery. Her bursting aura, carrying the weight of all of her anger, grief and resentment, had effectively smothered every other sound as it swept over everyone and everything in her vicinity like an unstoppable wave. "Shut up, both of you!" She yelled in her mother and sister's face, shoving them both away as she got to her feet; though she only had a fraction of their might, both Tamwood women stumbled back a step. "For the love of blood, can't you two can your fucking issues, just for one night?" Tears were still streaking down her cheeks and her voice shook, but she stood tall like an avenging angel, even against her stunned relatives. "Aren't you due for a break? Thirteen years! It's been going on for thirteen goddamn years! So Ivy didn't have children before crossing over! Who the fuck cares? She's still your daughter, but you didn't even blink that she was murdered! You were too busy getting pissed over your lack of grandchildren!" Erica yelled fearlessly at her terrifying mother. "And you!" The young vamp whipped around and faced a triumphantly smirking Ivy whose face promptly fell. "Don't you dare look so smug, you selfish _bitch, I'm pissed at you too_! I don't have a clue how you can be so lucid so soon after you died, but I don't care, you still pretended not to be! I'm glad you are, but how could you lie to everyone like that? Do you even realise what it did to everyone who loves you to think you were really gone? How could you do that to Dad, to Matthew, to Rachel? How the hell could you do that to _me_?"

"Rica, I had to-"

"Honey, you have to under-"

Both undeads began defending themselves, their venomous tones and murderous looks instantly vanishing, like they just flipped a switch or put on a different mask.

"I don't want to hear it!" Erica shut both of them up with all the discrimination of a carpet bombing. "You're _both_ horrible, and you deserve each other, and-and-and I don't care anymore! I just want you to can it for one night! Is it too much to ask? To let Seth have his burial in peace? What's it going to take?" Neither undead answered that, both of them obviously too stunned by the sight of the usually easy-going and mellow young woman completely mad with grief and anger. "Tell me!" She yelled deafeningly, pushing her voice on and on until it broke, leaving her violently panting but no less resolved.

"I can't make her see reason, Rica. I'm sorry." Ivy defended herself first, much to the outrage of her mother. "She's too stuck up about her precious bloodline to ever let bygones be bygones. You don't teach old dogs new tricks. There's nothing I can do to change that."

Would it surprise you if I said that answer was less than satisfactory to Erica? Didn't think so.

"Fine. Thanks for nothing. Fuck you very much, Ivy." Erica seethed, her arms crossing in defiance, not even blinking at Ivy's chagrined expression. "What about you, Mom? You still want me to take up the Tamwood name? Will _you_ finally cut your crap out if I do? I'll do it if it stops you two from fighting just this once!"

A collective gasp was heard from the assembly, as if this was an unexpected and tragic twist in an unfolding play; between the deaths of Ivy, Seth and Kisten last year, and Erica offering to give up her name today, too many old, ruling vampire lines were getting extinguished or ruined in much too short a span of time. The young generation was dropping like flies before they ever got a chance to pick up the torch, and none of this bode well for the vampiric community of Cincinnati.

I didn't share the general surprise, at least not to the same extent; Erica had already told me her mom was pressuring her to change her name to Tamwood so she could be the one to carry on the line in her deceased sister's stead. She wasn't legally allowed to buy alcohol yet, but like Ivy had told me when she recounted her younger years with Skimmer, since her bloodlust had awakened she was considered an adult in the eyes of vampire laws. As such, taking up the Tamwood name was solely up to her, and her strict refusal to do so, born of loyalty and love for her father, had been part of the reason why her home had become a living hell and she sought refuge at her sister's old place. If I wasn't completely taken aback by Erica's declaration, however, my heart lurched painfully at the sight of her father; the poor man probably wouldn't have looked more hurt if his beloved daughter had slapped him. If Erica went through with this, it might bring a measure of peace back between the contenders, and thus to the city as well, but his line would most likely end here and now, barring a divorce and second marriage, a solution that would rend the family he lived, breathed and literally bled for apart for good.

"I'm so sorry Dad." Erica came down from her rage abruptly when she realised what she had just suggested, her wide eyes darting to find the tall and gangly form of her father, standing in the first row of the crowd of onlookers. If it hurt me to look at him, to her it was unbearable, and she averted her eyes, suddenly looking like she occupied a much smaller space than even her petite frame did. "If that's what it takes, then... I'll... I..." That was all she managed to push out. She was out of steam. Like Nathalie's Scion had predicted, her righteous anger had momentarily given her the strength to stand up to her grief, but having to do something this awful to her father had knocked the wind out of her sails. She wavered, as if she was about to fall back down at the foot of her beloved's still empty grave. Both Ivy and their mom made a move towards her, only to be wildly swatted away by the flailing arms of the young vampire.

_Fuck you, Angel. _I had all I could stand of the hellish family drama. Not remotely caring if I got myself a face-full of vamp-strength knuckle sandwich, I made a dash for the staggering teenager, luckily not getting smacked in the process. I managed to catch her, just as she was about to collapse on the damp grass. "I got you." I whispered to the young vamp as I gave her a strong squeeze, carefully pulling her a few steps away from her speechless relatives. "I got you, hon."

My muscles tensed as her legs gave out and her weight came to rest fully on me, keeping the usually mesmerizingly graceful young woman from crumbling in a heap on the cold ground. Slowly, I eased her down until she could fold her knees under her body and rest in a somewhat dignified position to cry against my chest.

"Damnit! Damni-i-it!" The young vamp wailed, her fists balling in the material of my borrowed coat, threatening to tear it off. "Why can't they let him have his funeral in peace? Why? Is that really so hard? So much to ask?"

"No." I shushed her soothingly. "No, it's not. You shouldn't have to do this." I cupped her smooth oval face and made her look at me. Her eyes were black and rimmed with red, her cheeks splotchy and cold, wet with tears. "You don't have to do this." I murmured before taking my eyes off hers and glaring reproachfully at the two other vampires. Meeting both their gaze in turn as they drew closer once more, I tapped a line and growled more than pronounced "rhombus", letting a black and gold sheet of Ever After crackle violently into existence between us and them. More worried whispers rose from the assistance to our ugly family drama at the sight, but I didn't give two fairy farts if I flashed them my tainted, demon-smutted aura.

_Let them be afraid of me. _I thought fiercely, for once welcoming the scared looks my display of power put on everyone's face save for Ivy's.

"Yes I do. I have to. I owe it to Seth. It's all I can do for him now. You said it yourself. I have to lay him to rest, and I can't do that with these two idiot jackasses chewing each other out over his grave!" Erica yelled at her undead relatives. Her mom glared back at being verbally abused that way, but Ivy just looked hurt. The younger undead looked unreadable in that moment, as if she was stuck between two responses to her sister's recriminations. Through the bubble of Ever After, she almost looked like a priceless old painting of some tragically depicted woman.

"We have to be united again. We're too vulnerable like this. They have to stop... I can't let... what happened to him... happen to someone else. I'll be Erica Tamwood if that's what it takes... I'll do i-it." Erica hiccupped, her breathing so choppy it almost gave her a stutter. Damn it all to hell, the kid was too good and pure for this crap.

"Rachel." Mr Randall's rocky voice said from behind me, the tall man's hand pressing against my protective bubble. "Rachel, please let me through."

"And you doubted _my_ ability to influence _Ivy_?" I hissed, low and reproachfully. "What do you call this?"

"I'm sorry." The tall man apologised, obviously ashamed of himself. "I'm so sorry, Rachel. Annabelle has been so passive and reclusive for so long ever since she rose, I never truly had to handle her mood swings. She's recovered more of her old strength than I gave her credit for."

"Why didn't you act? You could have done something!"

"I couldn't. Damn me to hell, but I couldn't. I'm sorry. I implore you, Rachel, let me in."

"Only if you can prove me she's not in your mind right now." I jerked my head towards Mrs Tamwood, knowing he was his wife's Scion. I wouldn't let anyone manipulate Erica tonight, and I didn't trust Mrs Tamwood not to try and sway her daughter through her husband.

"She's not. She shut me out, but it works both ways. I'm begging you, I may be Annabelle's Scion, but that doesn't mean I approve of everything she does. I won't let her speak through me. You have my word."

Even with that, I still hesitated to drop the bubble. I was getting unpleasant flashbacks of Ivy losing herself in Piscary's mind. They were making me doubt he could truly disentangle himself from his wife's powerful mental embrace.

"Please, she's my daughter. You can't force me to stand here and do nothing when she's hurting like this." Crackles of power licked at his hand as he pressed harder into my bubble, but if the vampire noticed the painful sparks, it didn't show on his face. The pain that filled his eyes had nothing to do with the burn on his hand and everything to do with his daughter's emotional agony. Most of his strength was behind the desperate push, and it was powerful enough that I felt the pressure grate against my brain. It was a loose circle, after all, and only my will gave it shape.

"If she forces her way into your head, I don't care if you're the freaking pope, I'm kicking your ass out. With magic if necessary." With that explicitly clear warning hanging between us, I relented and dropped the bubble momentarily, letting him through before bringing it back up once he could get within arm's reach of us. It was cramped with the three of us in here, but at least the two vamp women got the message they'd messed up and weren't welcome unless they did some serious grovelling.

"I don't care what my last name is, Dad." Erica sobbed at her father, looking up from my shoulder when she heard and smelled him close by. "You'll always be my dad, and I swear I'll always be your Rica, but I can't... I can't take their bullshit anymore. Not at Seth's..." She strangled on her words, and buried her face back in the hollow of my neck to cry some more.

"I know, Honey." Mr Randall whispered chokingly to his broken daughter, the tall man kneeling slowly next to us to embrace the crying vampire. "I'll always love you, whether you're Erica Randall or Erica Tamwood. You know that."

"It's not fair. How did things get so messed up I have to go there, Dad?" Erica moved from my arms to his, and I looked away to give them some semblance of privacy, turning my gaze back to the now-silent undeads. Ivy and her mom were still standing a few steps away, both of them looking at anything but each other. I cleared my throat, and my vamp met my disappointed stare, our usual understanding passing between us like magic from a line into an inexperienced warlock's chi; uncomfortable, painful even, but undeniably right and natural in a way that defied words and conscious thoughts.

_Are you really going to stand there and let this happen?_ I thought at her, like that would be enough to get her to her senses and make her stop this insanity. Maybe it was underestimating my influence on her to think so, since after a few seconds of holding my gaze, she took a step forward, her head held high. A few inches away from the edge of my bubble, she took a knee, humbly lowering herself to her fallen sister's height.

"Rica, if you do this, if you really go through with this, you know what will happen." She began softly, as if each word pained her greatly. "I already came into the inheritance meant for the Tamwood heir. There's none left for you, and if you give up your name in order to bear our mother's, you will also cut yourself from Dad's assets. They'll go to one of your cousins, and you won't get anything. You'll be left penniless, dependent on both of them for the rest of your life."

"You think I care about that?" Erica hissed, outraged at what her sister suggested. "I don't give two shits about money or the cars or the house or any of this shit right now!"

"I care. Seth is gone, but you're not. You have a long life ahead of you, but if you give up your name, you won't have anything, no house, no death fund, nothing to sustain you in the long run. I can't let you do that."

"Do not interfere, Ivy!" Their mother joined in just as angrily as her younger daughter, placing a hand that would have no doubt broken a lesser creature's bones on Ivy's shoulder. Both Heidi and Reed took a step forward too, the two of them ready to muscle in if need be, their hands close to their concealed firearms. "Let her make her own choice. I will not abandon my own child if she-"

"Of course you'd say that. You're not exactly a neutral party, are you?" Ivy scoffed, brutally rising up to shake her mom's hand off. Disdainfully, she made a show of dusting off her suit jacket where Annabelle's hand had touched it. "You're so obsessed with your line, just like you were all of the past thirteen years. You can't accept that the Tamwood name is ended, can you? Well I can. If you want to save it so badly you're willing to end your husband's line and break your daughter's heart to bring back a ruined shadow of yours, it's your business, but I sure as hell won't be your facilitator."

"You self-righteous little whelp!" Annabelle Tamwood seethed as the chance to regain what she had lost with her daughter's death was dashed from her by Ivy backing down, but it was all she could do. They had a truce, and Ivy, much to my relief, was finally being true to her word. She was being the bigger woman. She wasn't exactly nice about it, but I could forgive her, seeing as her mom had done more than her fair share of bitchiness in the past minutes.

"If you say so, Mother. I have something to fight for, just like you used to. If it makes me self-righteous, so be it. I can live with that." Ivy responded calmly and coolly as she slowly pushed past the other undead, finishing above her shoulder once her back was to her, "Our quarrel can be settled elsewhere. I'm leaving now. Convince Erica to break Dad's heart on your own terms, if you can."

"V... V! I never said I want you to go! I just want the two of you to kiss and make up! Just this once!" Erica called after her big sister, her voice pleading enough that Ivy stopped mid-stride, taking a brief look at her over her shoulder.

"I love you, Sis. You know that, but... there are some things I just can't do, not even for you." Ivy smiled sadly, her hand raised with her middle and index fingers crooked in a bunny-eared 'kiss-kiss' gesture. "I think it's for the best. Coming here was a bad idea."

"But I need you right here... I don't want to go through this night without you. I can't."

"Of course you can. The worst is over now." Ivy answered, her voice tender and compassionate, her eyes proud. "Besides, your friends are right here with you. You can manage without me." Turning to me, she gave me a slow nod. "Keep taking good care of her for me." She said, making me wonder for a second if she knew just how close the two of us had gotten over the past week. "You two stay with Rachel. I think I can still manage to drive myself back home." She ordered her two bodyguards with a hint of exasperation when they fell into steps behind her. Heidi and Reed consulted briefly with each other with a glance, looking for a second like they might press the issue, but they wisely decided to back down and take their place back a short distance from me and the Randall's. All eyes were on my vamp, and murmurs that sounded ominous to her future political career, and thus her future, period, rose from Seth's gathered friends and family. An undead vampire had backed down in the face of a rival, and while it made me proud of my lover, almost enough to forgive her, others obviously didn't see it under the same light.

Unfortunately, those were the hearts she had to win over if she wanted to be crowned master vamp. Something told me as a failed pretender she wouldn't last long if her rival was picked over her, family be damned...

"I didn't want her to go..." Erica whispered grouchily against her dad's shoulder as her big sister left the ceremony behind. "Stupid pig-heads, both of them..."

"I know, but she's doing the right thing. It's for the best, Honey. If they're not ready to make peace, then it's pointless for them to make things harder for you and everyone else." Mr Randall murmured to her, grief, relief, pride warring for dominance in his eyes, the only part of his face that showed over the top of Erica's hair.

_It's for the best for everyone else, sure, but I doubt that's the case for her... _I thought as Ivy vanished from view through the cemetery gate, the screeching of tires and the roar of her huge SUV's engine rising from somewhere beyond the wall. She didn't sound happy if her driving was anything to go on; I suspected she would cause a few heart attacks , if not scuff a few bumpers, before she reached whatever base of operation she had established for herself. Even mad, though, I wasn't glad to see her go. She was gone for now, and I felt more than a little pinch on my heartstrings, and for more than her simple absence. I could only hope she was right and the worst was indeed over for Erica, and that things wouldn't take a grim turn for Ivy because of the compassion she'd shown. I didn't want to implicate myself in vamp matters, but I knew I would take their whole damn world by storm if the alternative was letting my Ivy get killed again.

To hell with the consequences.


	23. Chapter 22

A/N: Surprise! Guess what people? I'm not actually dead. Whoddathunk?

I'm very sorry about this latest delay. The universe it seems keeps conspiring to keep me from finishing this story in a timely manner. Since the last time I uploaded, I managed to flunk out of my degree, therefore requiring I once again turn my life on its head looking for a future. I won't bore you with the details, but it's been a rough patch I crawled out of recently. I had no willpower left to write for a long-ass time. It didn't help either that this chapter has been fighting me for months with a ferocity that made me wonder if it was self-aware enough to refuse to be written. It was easily the greatest writing ordeal of my short list of fanfic accomplishments... which makes me doubly embarrassed to be posting this today. I've sweat blood and tears to push it out, I've made you wait so damn long, and all I've got to show for it... isn't exactly the most thrilling piece of writing you'll ever see (I would have said it's garbage if not for you, Wye, so thanks). I hope you'll disagree, and I hope you can forgive me for missing my previous deadline in such a spectacular manner. I've screwed worse than fanfic this time, and it's my only excuse.

It's also worth noting that I haven't read the Hollows since I quit less than halfway through PD. At this point, I might be straying pretty far from the existing canon, so keep in mind I've outlined this after ODW came out, and I'm only working within the series' confines as they were established at this point (minus the banshees). I don't exactly know better at this point.

* * *

**Chapter 23**

The remainder of the time I spent at the cemetery was quiet and uneventful compared to what transpired with Ivy's family. Other than a few surprisingly admiring looks I caught from the corner of my eyes coming from the vampires surrounding me, nothing really worth mentioning happened. Mrs Tamwood looked perturbed about something, you would have needed a power tool or three to separate Erica and her dad and Angel stayed out of sight, which I was starting to believe was her natural behaviour, she could be so erased and discreet.

Truthfully, I had no idea if the rogue guardian was still around, what with that obscuration charm of hers, and so it didn't bode too well for the answers I hoped she would give me. I could put two and two together however, and I did realise, once I had some peace and quiet to mull it over, that Nathalie had probably loaned Ivy her scion to help her establish her power base, seeing as the ancient master vamp had also made her a gift of her blood and power in order to help smooth this whole 'I murdered the woman you love, I'm sorry' thing over with Skimmer. Ivy hadn't mentioned taking a scion of her own, but I doubted she had, meaning the assistance of the old and powerful elf would have been doubly welcome in order to fulfil some of those required duties. And, before you ask, no, I'm not oblivious or plain stupid enough to believe Ivy wasn't considering me as a potential candidate for that job. In all likelihood, she was saving me a seat by her side, which would account for the fact she was still without a scion even in this period of strife. That was a subject I intended to shoot down whenever it even hinted at being brought up. I had less than no intentions of ever taking up that mantle, period.

_I'm sorry babe. I love you, and I'll prove it just about any way you want, but we're not tying that noose. _Ever_._ I addressed my lover a quick apologetic thought, feeling just a tiny bit guilty I never intended to even broach the subject with her after all she'd sacrificed for me. It was a slippery slope if I ever saw one, and I didn't want things to start heading downhill when prospects between us were finally looking up.

Lucky for me, I wasn't left alone to mull over that dangerous line of thought long, as I was joined by Reed and Heidi as soon as the congregated vampires got moving. The two vamps had taken Ivy's orders to heart, as well as annoyingly close flanking positions next to me. The urge to shoo them was definitely there, but since I liked the two of them and didn't want them in trouble with my girlfriend, I shut up and graciously tolerated my two highly lethal, sharply dressed signposts. Leaving me alone would have been indulging anyway; I wasn't scary enough to outweigh the threat of Ivy's wrath, unless magic was involved.

When the time came to leave and we began to move towards the cars, I was surprised not to feel so excluded any longer. I still stood out like a sore thumb amongst the many vampires surrounding me, but somehow I felt... accepted, rather than a barely welcome outsider, the clearest sign being I wasn't left behind in the dust once the show was over. Amongst themselves, vampires didn't restrain themselves to strictly politically correct speed, yet there they were, slowing their pace to let me in their midst, surrounding me almost protectively. The distance between me and them was gradually but surely shrinking from wariness to near-reverence, something I wondered they were aware of. As I observed the subtle but undeniable phenomenon, I realised standing up to two undeads for Erica's sake had elevated their opinion of me somehow; vampires have a tendency to look up to those who stand up for them. Ivy certainly had revered me like that for a while back when she was truly alive, after I took down Piscary. She had grown past her natural tendencies later on, which I had been proud of her for because having the strong woman, or anyone, look up to me that way had been unnerving as hell, but my weariness with Cincinnati's quasi-rejection of my past actions meant I still basked a bit in the feeling of admiring acceptance tonight. I was almost a shunned witch these days, so bite me but it felt good to be admired and appreciated for doing what came naturally to me, rather being judged and frowned upon for my illicit or sometimes downright whacky methods. Not to sound whiny, but I never got so much as a thank you for stopping Al rampaging through Cinci or for taking the Focus out of the many-sided chess board that was the Inderland balance of power. Even though it had to be done, for everyone's sake, I mostly just caught flak for it. Just saying, even after you save their butts, people can be ungrateful jerks. It was a refreshing change that they weren't for once.

Reed, Heidi and I had some unforeseen trouble when we reached my tiny _two_-seater convertible, though, and I couldn't help but smirk a bit at my two heavily armed vamp signposts when they worriedly consulted with each other, trying to figure out how to get to the Tamwood-Randall estate when their boss had thundered out of the cemetery with their ride. Fortunately for both their asses, and their wallets, I didn't get to leave them one of them behind, and earn them Ivy's ire, since Mr Randall waved them over to his car, offering them a ride as a gesture of goodwill. The two of them split up, Heidi staying with me while Reed took Mr Randall up on his offer, the larger car of Ivy's family much more accommodating to his ursine frame than my little sporty one.

"Word to the wise? When she offers, don't let her drive." Reed took me aside before he left and warned me in a mischievous conspiratorial whisper, even though Heidi was standing right next to us and there was no way her vamp hearing would miss it. "You saw what she can do with a SUV. Get her behind the wheel of anything sportier, and you've got yourself a guaranteed heart attack."

Heidi took offence at that, and decided to express her discontentment by swatting her friend on the arm hard enough to stagger him, yet despite hitting Reed with the approximate gentleness of a Mack truck, she only succeeded in making the large man guffaw. Peeved, Heidi tried to swoop in for a follow-up, only to end up firmly but affectionately gripped by his huge hands and captured into an almost worshipful embrace, the female vampire I'd only ever seen aloof and sharply focused bursting with gleeful laughter when Reed nuzzled her throat in apology. I turned around when the two of them shared a quick but passionate kiss before parting ways, only Heidi staying near my car.

"So... you and Reed, huh?" I gave her a friendly poke, glad to see my instincts had been right and these two had found each other. Despite the mild weather the living vamp's skin had a flushed tint to it and her eyes were twinkling in pleasure, while her breathing was just hard enough to hint at Reed's kissing skills. She couldn't look more like the cat that ate the canary.

"Reed and me." The woman I'd seen handle a shotgun half my size like she was born with it in her hands confirmed with a nod, chewing on her lower lip to try and keep a huge grin worthy of any crushing schoolgirl from blooming on her face. It wasn't exactly effective, as it only made her ludicrously satisfied look worse, and a pair of perfectly shaped dimples appear on her cheeks, which was only one thing I noticed when I caught my eyes lingering on her face. Now that she wasn't shadowing her mistress or rescuing teenagers out of booby trapped pre-Turn mansions, it was nice to see her let her hair down. She had been coldly beautiful before, but with a radiant smile on her flushed face I finally realised she was a stunner. The vamp didn't quite measure up to the beauty standards of my personal vampire princess, but she was a looker in her own rights, and really, who can stand a chance next to flat-out perfection? No one, that's who.

"I don't suppose you had a hand in him asking me out?"

"Me? I've no clue what you're getting at." I replied innocently enough, but I couldn't help the small, mischievous smile tugging at the corner of my lips.

"Really?" The brunette vamp arched an eyebrow at me, sounding less than convinced. "Because his timing was just a little strange. We've been circling each other for months without either of us making a move, yet all of a sudden the day after he meets you, he changes his mind and comes straight at me. That's convenient."

"I simply questioned just how oblivious he could be to what was standing right there in front of him." I smirked as I pulled the driver-side door open and slipped in. "Okay, fine, I might have lightly whacked him over the head with a clue-by-four." I admitted when Heidi shot me a knowing look. "What was I supposed to do, stand there and watch? I may not have known you long, but come on, the way he looked at you when your back was turned? It was painfully obvious there was something there, not to mention just plain painful to see, the way he looked at you when your back was turned. He flipped the sweetheart switch whenever he thought you wouldn't notice and he was too busy trying to pretend like he didn't really care to notice you liked him back. Like trying to bring the matching poles of two magnets together, I tell you."

"We really were, weren't we?" Heidi agreed, a grateful smile playing on her heart-shaped lips. "At any rate, thank you. He's a great guy, even if he was clueless. I think I'll hold on to him for a while."

"Any time." I paused for a second, feeling a certain curiosity bubble to the surface of my mind, brought about by the sudden development of these two's relationship. "Can I ask you a question, though? There's one thing that's bugging me."

"Of course."

"Feel free to answer or not if it's uncomfortable, but... well, there was a lot of talk going on about organised marriages and bloodlines and stuff like that back there..." I began, walking on eggshells. "And now you and Reed are suddenly seeing each other, and it's pretty sudden and all..."

"Yes?" Heidi said, expectation making her drawl the single syllable into a question.

"Well, you're both, hum... at an appropriate age to settle down and start a family." It's hard to tell with vamps because they hardly show signs of age (I know, I'm one to talk with my demon-smooth skin), but Heidi looked a little older than Ivy, and Reed a little older than her. At a glance I'd place her in her early thirties and Reed in his mid ones. "It's just that most vamps I've met had all those expectations of marriage and children pilled on them, but you and Reed just seemed to hit it off without a second thought, like you had absolutely no other obligations. It's making me curious, that's all."

"Hmm, that just means you usually frequent higher vamp circles than mine and Reed's. Only nobles really have anything expected of them, at least where marriage and pumping out little vamp rug rats is concerned. No one cares what we do outside the I.S., as long as we take care of the trash and honour our fealties."

"So your families aren't getting their noses all up in your business? That's nice."

"It is. In a lot of ways, were much freer than living vamps from older or nobler families. Reed isn't even from around here. The I.S. transferred him here from Chicago a few years ago, to lead his own SRU team. He's in touch with his family back home, but they're not super close or anything." Heidi answered, beginning to tell me how Reed managed to score himself such a promotion and shining an admiring, almost adoring light on him though she avoided giving me any crunchy details about her new boy toy, proving how much more reserved she was than him. More than her discretion, however, I was hearing conspicuously little about her, and she seemed a little hesitant to share her own story.

"That's... interesting. Even by my standards." I chuckled after she finished explaining in great detail why Reed's previous captain probably celebrated until sunrise before crying himself to sleep in the morning ever since he left Chicago. Let's just say the tale involved the husband of a high-ranking city official, a sauna, several kilos of pure Brimstone, enough black market weapons to take over a moderately-sized country, not a whole lot of clothing and a professional escort named Antonia who may or may not have been born "Antonio". Un-freaking-believable. "I'm not hearing a lot about you, though."

"There's... really not much to tell, honestly." Heidi answered, chewing her lower lip embarrassedly. "I don't want to bore you, or anything."

"Well, everyone's got a story. I'm curious to know yours. Unless of course you're like the goddess Athena? Born fully grown, decked out in your arms and armour?" I asked, mentally thanking Erica's passion for myths and legends she had shared with me in the three weeks prior to hers and Seth's kidnapping... Okay, so she'd really mostly discussed a few of them with Ceri one evening, while I bitched and grimaced nearby over some nasty herbal infusion the elf was intent on cramming down my throat, supposedly to help my magical abilities recover, but I did pick up a few bits and pieces here and there. Bite me, that sounded smart, and flattering, too. Heidi certainly had that warrior goddess look about her. Stop looking at me like that, the analogy worked...

"N-no. Not exactly." Heidi responded, giving me the exact same look you'd expect. I swear, whenever I say something remotely smart, it's like I've grown a second head; people just give me the funniest stares. I should keep to gesticulating and grunting, because why bother, really... "It's just that..."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to pry." I told her after a few seconds of tense silence; Heidi was clearly torn between disclosure and... was that shame? "You don't have to tell me if it's too uncomfortable."

"It's not. Well, it shouldn't be, anyway. It's been for a while, but I've dealt with it, and it's not like I could change it anyway..." She took a breath and winced, looking a bit embarrassed. "I'm babbling aren't I?"

"Yes, and I must admit coming from you it's one of the stranger sights I've seen today." I joked with an uneasy chuckle, but the woman _was_ a fair badass to be stumbling over her words so. "Really, it's okay." I finally assured her when it became clear she was struggling with the question I'd asked. "That was nosey. Forget I asked."

"No, you... We may not have known each other long, but I do trust you, and you've earned the right to know. It's just... I'm not used to talking about my mother..." She finally began, pushing out each word seemingly going against her every instinct. "You see, my mother... isn't a living vampire." She finally admitted, making it sound like a shameful confession.

"You mean she's... oh." My first thought was that Heidi meant her mom was undead, but that seemed unlikely to account for such discomfort, at least not unless Heidi was somehow responsible. If Ivy was any indication, that burden on her conscience would have made the subject very touchy rather than an issue she could have dealt with. There was another, however, another possibility, especially if she was a vampire 'commoner'. "Your mom was born human, wasn't she? You're first gen." I guessed and, looking at her, knew instantly I got it in one. "How did it happen? Was it planned, or was she...?" I trailed off, refusing to say it out loud.

"No... It wasn't planned, but she wasn't blood raped or anything. At least it didn't start off like that. From what I heard, it was a blood encounter that went too far." Heidi audibly swallowed and looked away from me, a quick glance in the rear view mirror showing me the recollection had made her eyes grow distant. "My mother was one of those humans that took the Turn in stride. When she learned vampires were real back in the seventies, she became a badge-carrying member of every 'Inderlanders are our friends' club she could find. From sixteen to about twenty-one, life was a huge party for her. Alcohol, sex, drugs and vampires were her poisons of choice. It didn't end too well. Vamp bites were her worst addiction, and during a random hook-up with an undead her partner lost control and infected her. The rest is history." She dropped the subject so fast, she was nearly breathless when she grew quiet.

"I'm sorry." I soberly offered her my sympathies for a woman she never knew. That's how vampire living bloodlines are started, always with a pregnant human woman turned into a low-blooded vampire. Unlike its mother the child born from this process is always high-blooded, hence the 'first-generation' appellation applied to it. The strain of the change on the mother's body, coupled with that of giving life to such a powerful creature, however, often meant those babies became orphaned soon after their births, like Heidi had doubtlessly been. "Looking at you, I'm positive she had to be a strong and beautiful woman."

"She... is?" Heidi replied, turning back to look at me with a befuddled expression. "Rachel, my mother is still very much alive."

"Oh? But you said... When you said she 'wasn't', I thought..." I stammered, suddenly lost. If not her orphaning, what was bothering her? Could the simple injustice of Heidi's conception account for her discomfort? "Sorry I jumped to conclusions. The way you mentioned it, I thought she'd passed away." I gently prodded further.

"No, we celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday just last month. She's still around, and still truly alive. She's in perfect health, in fact. Some days I think she'll outlive me." I suppose death _was_ an occupational hazard in her line of work. Hunting rabid weres, black witches and undead who stray from the straight and narrow is not safe by any definition of the word.

"Then... what happened? You know, if it's not too personal, of course. Did she know she was pregnant at the time?" Out of curiosity, I'd researched the effects of vampire bites during a pregnancy after Nathalie threatened Ceri with dire consequences for her unborn daughter should she manage to get her fangs in the elf's throat. Exposure to vampire saliva in the womb makes crack babies look like sunshine and bunnies, let me tell you. If you need to have a poison while having a baby, do them a favour and chain smoke. Don't bare your neck to an undead unless you mean to give birth to a new bloodline. If Heidi's mom had known she was carrying a daughter and let a vamp sink their fangs in her throat, well... let's just say that's not the best way to start their family life.

"No, she didn't." Heidi breathed in deep, and forced a placid look onto her face. "She decided to keep me, obviously. She cleaned up her act after she was turned, and when she learned she was pregnant with me, she stepped it up even further. Went back to school, found work, straightened out, you know? Too bad there were no classes available that taught how to raise a daughter of a different species from yourself, though. She could have used them seeing as she had no clue how to raise a little vampire girl. She'd made a few real honest vamp friends during her partying years who taught her enough to manage, but... let's just say even with a few pointers, it was rough at times. I wasn't an angel. To put it mildly"

"I'm having the hardest time imagining you as a difficult child." I smiled, the image of her as a five-year old girl with long auburn pig-tails, shiny black shoes and a little plaid dress, bullying boys and stealing their toy guns flashing through my mind.

"I didn't want to be, it's just... The instincts of first gen vamps come harder and faster." Heidi explained. "Same goes for their strength and speed. I didn't have anyone to help me out with those urges running through my head or all that power I had at my fingertips. I could vanish right before my mother's eyes at age four, and throw her off hard enough to give her a concussion by the time I turned ten. That's not the kind of power a child should have over her parents."

"I hear you." I nodded and smiled, remembering that time back when I was a kid in that make-a-wish camp for dying children and blasted Trent into a tree with raw ley line power. Humans may think they have it rough at times raising their teenagers, but Inderland parental situations could turn so much more colourful...

"I imagine you would." Heidi smiled, a bit grimly. As a police officer, she'd likely had her share of incidents involving out of control teens. "In my case, it only got really difficult around the time I turned fifteen."

"Around the time your bloodlust hit?" I guessed again, knowing adolescence was generally the time when vampires felt the first stirs of their inner demons... and when undead vamps started taking an interest in their young living kin. _Fuck me, I hope she didn't go through the same hell Ivy and Skimmer did..._

"It was confusing as hell when it first manifested." Heidi acknowledged, her irises thinning a little making me squirm in my seat. On Ivy, it looked thrilling and more than a little hot, on Erica it looked harmless or heartbreaking, even cute sometimes, but on her... Yeah. "It made me confused as hell in turn when I was a teenager. I liked boys way too much, amongst other, less avowable things. Lucky for me my mother's an ex-junky. She knew what signs to look out for, so she kept me from getting addicted to anything really hard, but there wasn't much she could do about my rampaging dating habits. Let's just say I wasn't home at dawn with any assiduity. I had more pregnancy scares than I care to count before I even turned twenty, and I sent one or two of my boyfriends to the emergency room to get my bites stitched up."

"Damn..." I quietly swore.

"I had these cravings I didn't really understand, and I don't think any guy who approached me really appreciated how dangerous I could be. They were used to vamp girls who play-bit while making out, or just barely began exploring their first shudders of bloodlust. Me? I hit my adult stride barely a week after my lust first hit. Around the time I turned seventeen, I already had trouble going a few days without blood."

"Did you ever... take it too far?" I was a bit reluctant to ask.

"All the time, but not so far anyone died. Frankly it's a miracle my first dead body was found at the end of a smoking gun. I was still one bad, _bad_ girl. It gave me some twisted reputation as a nasty nympho by the time I finished college. Boys were daring each other to come on to me, and I didn't say no often, not when it was clear all they wanted was to get in my pants. A few of them came out of the experience limping. Guess I got the last laugh in the end..."

A buzzing noise interrupted her telling, and Heidi shook herself out of her gloomy thoughts to glance down at her vibrating pant pocket. Fishing out her cell, she checked the text message she had received, a smile blooming on her frowning features the recollection had darkened.

"Good news, I hope?" I asked with friendly irony.

"Hmm, Reed texted me. We're still in radio contact, so he's been hearing my side of the conversation." She lightly tapped her ear, where a very discreet transmitter could be seen just barely protruding out. "He just sent me a list of... expletives he feels are appropriate for my past partners." The vampire chuckled as she kept reading the words on her cell's tiny screen. "Let's just say the nicest ones are... emasculating, to say the least."

"That bad, huh?" I couldn't help but smile at the small display of protectiveness and the pleased look it put on Heidi's face.

"Worse."

"So what changed after college, then?" I nudged her again, curious to know what had moulded a blood-craving teenager into a rigidly focused SIU officer.

"Military service, if you can believe it. I was eighteen, school was going nowhere fast... The army always welcomes vamps with open arms, no pun intended." Heidi answered evasively for the second time tonight, which I took to meaning she had used a military career to get away from some trouble or another. Vampires without connections who step in a mess too deep to dig themselves out of often walk into the first recruiting office they can find, since the military provides them with a refuge even a master vampire will think twice before crossing. With their physical abilities, trained vamps make for great small scale fighting units, and when they come out of their service most of them are too lethal for their old troubles to keep following them. A soldier's one thing, a super-soldier with fangs, more muscle power you'd know what to do with and reflexes that would make a cobra's green with envy is another entirely.

"I had trouble with it at first, but I grew to love the discipline and the focus. I liked having a real goal, and the training was also a real outlet. Maybe it's weird, but it's really cathartic to unload mag after mag from an M4, you know?" I smiled and nodded it wasn't weird; though my experience with actual firearms was limited, I'd had some fun on the shooting range back at the I.S., not to mention my splat-tag parties with Ivy in the church's cemetery. Of course nowadays, I'm not sure it would be thrilling or terrifying to play that again... "Anyway, I made through basic and then Special Forces selection. Saw a little action overseas, mostly in Africa, hunting down black magic harvesters and rogue undead warlords. I came back after my tour and enrolled into the academy. I liked the army, but the I.S. is where I chose to stay. I rode around in a cruiser for a while, but with a military background, it wasn't long before I got invited to try out for SIU selection. I got in on my first try..." Her voice rose in volume a bit and she smirked mischievously, clearly poking at her boyfriend's ego while he couldn't poke back. Reed, as I remembered Heidi had mentioned last week, had to try out several times before he was picked by the SIU leadership, and the barb made me chuckle as well. "... and here I am. That's my story." An impossibly short time later her phone vibrated again.

"'See if I defend your honour again.'" Heidi read (and laughed, beautifully I might add) out loud. "I swear, that man can text faster than a teenage girl. Thumbs like lightning." Another vibration followed that comment, but whatever Reed had replied Heidi didn't relay this time. I could have sworn there was a hint of a blush creeping up on those sculpted alabaster cheeks...

"Can you really do that?" I thought I heard her murmur, and had to resist the urge to cram my fingers in my ears and start singing 'LA-LA-LA-LA-LAAAAAAAAAAAA!'. Aside from making me look like a six-year old, I also happened to be behind the wheel, and none too interested in wrapping my car around a phone pole. Just saying.

"Okay, so maybe you weren't just plopped from the earth ready to kick ass and take names." I cleared my throat and got the conversation back on track, sparing her, and I, some mild embarrassment. "I don't get why you're ashamed of where you come from, though. There a part you left out somewhere? Because maybe it's not an epic tale of rags to riches, but I feel I just heard a pretty impressive success story. You should sell the movie rights. I'd fork over the cash to see it."

"It's not..." My levity on the subject seemed to leave Heidi at a loss for words. "You're aware there's a stigma associated with being first gen, and there's an even deeper one for turned vamps, right?"

"Yup." I said, sparing a thought for my old ghoul boss, and the way Ivy had disdainfully looked down upon him. I liked to think she found him despicable because he was scum rather than because of the blood in his veins, but I didn't kid myself she might have been prejudiced about the rest of his kind too. "So?"

"'So?' So I've had to live with it most of my life, and so did my mother. Isn't it understandable that it's not my favourite subject?"

"I can understand hating the stigma. I can tell you I do too." I conceded to placate her. "I'm thinking of picking of those black pointy hats to go with mine. Maybe get a black cat and a reverse cross tattoo on my forehead to match. I might as well have the appropriate props if everyone's going to believe those bullshit rumours about me." I replied, referring to my own growing reputation as a black witch. "It sucks, but the things I did that got me this bad rep? I wouldn't take them back. If I can say that, I don't get why _you_ have to hate your own situation. You and your mom made it through, despite your Turn-taken rotten start. It's admirable, not shameful. Anyone who'd judge you for that can go screw themselves with a power drill. It's terrible that your mom never had a choice to become a vamp, sure, but something good came out of it, right?"

"I'm not sure I'd put it quite like that..." Heidi said neutrally. "I was still conceived even before the whole vampire deal. I would have been born regardless."

"Details, details. Just trust me, it is. I've seen with my own eyes how most turned vamps turn out. They're all so desperate to please, so worried they won't get to live forever unless they do all the dirty work their masters ask of them. And if they don't do it out of greed, then they'll do it out of fear. Your mom didn't do anything like that, did she now? No, instead she straightened out her life, out of love for a child she didn't plan for, a child she kept even with everything else on her plate. Frankly, it's a proof of love you should be proud of."

Okay, so I had my own similar identity shame problem brought by freak genetics I could do nothing but was still tied up in knot about. Heidi at least wasn't part of the most feared and (rightfully) hated species on this side of reality. Do as I say, not as I do...

... Actually, if you know what's good for you, when I speak just ignore me, plug your ears and pretend I'm not there. Odds are you'll live longer that way.

"I am. Rachel, I love my mom. If you doubt it, then I've given you the wrong idea." Heidi answered more fiercely than she no doubt intended, which only made me smile.

"If that's the case, then this attitude right there," I gestured to her; her shoulders were squared, her back straight, her head high, her lips parted just enough to give a threatening glimpse of her sharp teeth. 'Fierce' was the word that came to mind watching her, "is what you should show the world all the time. No shame to have, no excuses to anyone. Cheers." I mimed tipping my hat to her, at the same time her phone vibrated yet again. Whatever Reed had told her this time made a small, peaceful smile spread Heidi's lightly glossed lips.

"Ivy made a good choice. I'm glad she has someone like you." She declared, not quite out of the blue, the announcement still making me squirm uncomfortably in my seat. There weren't a great many 'choices' Ivy could have done regarding this little witch that would warrant this kind of declaration from a vampire, and the two of us weren't any of them.

"A good choice?" I part asked, part winced, not looking forward to spelling out the exact nuances of mine and Ivy's relationship, especially now that clothes were finally optional in our interactions. _Oh boy, here we go again..._

"For her life partner. Maybe something more, eventually." ... _ or maybe we don't?_ Heidi, in a splendid display of lucidity, apparently didn't assume I was bound to Ivy, unlike most vampires that happened to cross our paths.

"Just so you know, I could kiss you for saying that." I said, almost grinning at the vampire seated next to me. She looked like I threatened her for a second, though, and shook her head like it was a terrible idea, which was a little weird until I reminded myself she worked for my more territorial than ever girlfriend. "Not literally." I reassured her with a little chortle of laughter. "Most everyone I meet assumes I'm already bound to Ivy right off the bat, just because I can stand close to her without looking like I'm about to crap my pants. Frankly, it's annoying as hell. It's nice to meet someone with a little faith in me."

"I can't say I blame them. You do act a certain way when she's around that reminds me of the better scions I've seen. It's pretty clear you're not if you take a closer look though... no offence, I just mean by that you don't have that... glow consuming undead blood gives." She quickly added, as if she feared I would take umbrage that she remarked I clearly wasn't Ivy's walking-talking blood bank.

"None taken. I'm not sure what you mean, though." I said quizzically. "Not about the blood, I've seen what it does, but the other thing."

"The way you act when she's around? You're at ease around Ivy, without looking like her paid escort. You carry yourself like you know how to handle her, and it's rare for a non-vamp to know one well enough for that."

"Yeah, I think I learned how to do that. Eventually, after a dozen or so close calls and making every single little mistake and no-no in the book." I chuckled. "Don't paint me as a saint just yet. It was more a matter of self-preservation, trust me. Ivy came uncomfortably close to bleeding me dry against the nearest wall more than once before we got to where we are now. I had to learn what buttons not to push in order to stay alive." _Although nowadays, I could probably use that knowledge for wholly different purposes..._ I spared the single wicked thought, remembering how fun it could be to break all the rules at the right time with a vamp.

"No, it's more than that. I'm not talking about her instincts, plenty of non-vamps learn just enough to pick up lovers for blood trysts and survive them. Not much to admire there. It can get disgusting and exploitive actually." She grimaced. "I'm talking about Ivy as a woman. The way you look at her like you care about her decency. The two of you look like a real couple. You push her to be better, for her own sake. You make her better somehow. It's hard to explain, to tell you the truth, but it's unmistakably there."

"Heidi, she's my girlfriend." I squirmed a bit uncomfortably under her admiring gaze. "She's my girl. Of course I want her to be the best she can be. Why wouldn't I?"

"I know, I just... wanted to say I promise I'll stick with Ivy as long you do. No matter how bad it gets, I've got both your backs."

"I'll wait for a while before backstabbing her, then." I obviously joked, to hide the uneasiness I felt at the vamp's unvoiced request to support her mistress through thick and thin. I was with Ivy for Ivy, not for the sake vamp politics. My policy regarding those was to play ostrich as much as possible unless they became a direct threat to me or someone I loved, in which case the stakes (or the broken chair legs, or the white picket fence, or whatever sharp, pointy object was readily available) came out and I went postal on whatever pair of fangs was in the vicinity.

Heidi didn't look amused so much as chagrined by the jibe, but we reached the Tamwood-Randall estate just in time to save me from having to pledge myself to Ivy and her entire camarilla to the ends of time to appease my new vamp friend. I babbled some nonsense about my luck my little convertible didn't take up much space in the crowded street filled with much nicer (and larger) cars, feeling crummy that I'd obviously disappointed the hopes Heidi had placed in me, but what the hell was I supposed to say? I didn't want Ivy's, Heidi's, Reed's, or any other vamp's dreams to hinge on me. That responsibility was not a burden I wanted to bear, or even felt capable of bearing. Knowing what she desired was peace and security for all living vampires was (barely) enough for me to accept the necessity of what Ivy had to do. This part was just a necessary evil, a transition period I couldn't wait to put behind us for good. As far as I was personally concerned I just wanted my girl to finish what she started so we could figure out how the rest of our time together would play out and get back to a semblance of normalcy.

Did it make it easier to see Heidi's face shut down as she exited my car, slipping on a guarded and professional mien I wasn't sure was appropriate for the no doubt _very_ mild threat I was under in this place? How about 'no'?

I shut my door with a sigh and took in the sight of the estate where my lover had spent her younger years. I'd only been to Ivy's family home once before, during a crisis a year and some change ago (big surprise considering I'd been going from crisis to crisis at the time). Ivy had come here to ask her father's help in keeping Piscary out of her head, and I'd ended up meeting him, Erica and Skimmer in one fell swoop. Other than the season swap the place hadn't changed at all. It was a big mansion several times larger than the house I grew up in, neighboured with others like it a ludicrous distance away. The grounds out back were larger than a city block, and only one glance at the front yard would suffice to know Ivy's family was loaded to the heavens and beyond. It was pretty as a button, sure, but like the first time I got a sense of sterility, of soullessness from the place. Perhaps because it was a young undead's dwelling, or perhaps because Ivy had so many unpleasant memories tied to it, but I'd sympathetically associated it with an emotional limbo of sorts. One glance at Erica was enough to guess this place in all likelihood wasn't as bad as I made it out to be, but I couldn't help the feeling that I was stepping into Ivy's purgatory.

_Would that make the church her heaven and Piscary's her hell?_ I thought idly with a hint of sorrowful longing for her. It hadn't been that long since she'd left, and I was still a bit mad at her for that scene she and her mom made, but I already missed Ivy. _Ah, hell, what are you gonna do? Maybe I can call her later, ask if she wants me to sleep over at her place. Ought to make her happy, calm her down. With a small miracle, maybe it'll even be enough to get her off my case the next time I need dressing advice..._

Erica and her parents had beaten Heidi and me to the family home by a few seconds, and they had just begun piling out by the time I locked my car down. Reed headed straight for us after a few words with Mr Randall I didn't get and one last hug to Erica, his eyes slightly worriedly lingering on his girlfriend. His shiny dress shoes were completely silent even though the driveway was made out of tiny white pebbles that crunched under my heels, no matter how lightly I tried to step, a sign he was slipping into his vampire nature, likely out of worry for the woman he cared about. The two exchanged a few words as they met, Reed embracing his smaller friend much more tamely than he had back in the graveyard, her head tucking comfortably beneath his chin despite her height. If possible I felt even worse for being unable to provide them with the guarantee for their future they so desperately needed. I'd just have to hope Ivy could pull through despite the setback she suffered, for all our sakes. I was getting sick of walking the warpath these past few years, and I wasn't looking forward to involving myself in this struggle in the foreseeable future.

"What was that about?" Erica asked as she caught back up to me. The young vamp looked marginally better now that the ceremony was over, which at least made me feel a bit better. She wasn't sparkling with laughter and _joie de vivre_ like she had been when I first met her, and all the tears she'd shed had left their mark on her face, but the exorcising power of a good screaming match and crying session, coupled with the closure of laying her boyfriend to rest, had managed to loosen up the smothering grip of her grief on her heart. The weight crushing her shoulders had subsided somewhat, and she walked upright despite obvious fatigue. I had a feeling her species' nocturnal affinities were the only thing helping her stay on her feet, and once the sun came up, she'd sleep like a rock until it went down again. Good for her. She deserved it after a night like this.

"What was what about?" I parroted back at her.

"Reed's been pounding on his phone half the way here, snickering and giggling and stuff, but as soon as we got here he got all sad and serious, like someone bit his kitty. What's up with him?"

_I don't know about any cat, but I sure bit his girlfriend. _ I thought, all but able to taste the bitterness of Heidi's dashed hopes coating the back of my throat. "Ah, nothing you need to worry about, hon." I assured her, trying not to let my discomfort show. "Heidi and I just talked for a bit, and I stirred up some memories that are still a little tender." That was at least true. It wasn't the reason why Heidi, and Reed by extension, looked so discomfited, but it was true. "You're looking a little better. I'm glad." I changed the subject, bringing the topic that in my opinion mattered the most for the moment back into the spotlight. "How are you?"

"I don't know. 'Better' sounds awfully callous. Lighter, I guess. Relieved. A little numb on the side." She answered wanly, before adding even more quietly, "A little guilty I don't feel I could crawl into the ground and lie beside him anymore."

"Hey, don't say that." I gently chastised her. "Making them happy is a huge part of loving someone, isn't it? So you know wherever he is, Seth doesn't want to hear such nonsense from you. It's a good thing you can begin to let go, if just a little."

"I guess... You and V were right, at least." She admitted in a shamed murmur, leaning against me so I could put my arm around her shoulders. "I'm glad it's behind me now, as horrible as it makes me feel."

"Baby steps, Hon. Baby steps." I answered with a sad smile and a kiss to her temple that filled my nose with the scent of shampoo and incense of her long soft hair. "You make your mom sweat for being such a jerk yet?" I looped our arms together and asked with conspiratorial quietness, my young friend relaxing further the more contact I offered her.

"Pff." Erica huffed. "I think she's doing fine beating herself up on her own. She hasn't said a word and she barely moved a muscle the whole way back here. You ever seen an undead vamp lost in thought? Looks like a very life-like statue."

"I'll just bet." I said, silently wondering if her undead mom's remorse was felt over the pain she'd put her daughter through or the lost chance to bring the Tamwood name back from the brink of oblivion. That she might actually be reconsidering her present course of action now that the toll it took on her family had been shoved in Mrs Tamwood's face seemed farfetched, but I'd been surprised by undead vamps lately. Maybe Nathalie's blood wasn't the sole reason Ivy could be credited for her enduring decency, and the older undead would show she was capable of doing the right thing as her daughter had. _God, what I wouldn't give for that to be true._

We strolled leisurely to the mansion's front door, taking the time to enjoy the clear and unseasonably dry night air on our way to an entry hall that was as grandiose as it was sterile. Varnished woods that should have given a lively or homely feel to the place echoed my footsteps alone as I shed Ivy's long duster and stored it into a placard near the mansion's foyer. Erica relaxed a fraction now that she was back in safe, familiar settings, and I followed her as she led me to the kitchen, getting a feeling of déjà-vu when she offered me, just as her sister had a year prior, something to drink. Even if I'd seen it before and wasn't strictly surprised, it didn't help the kitchen of the Tamwood-Randall family mansion was a virtual twin to the one I fell in love with back at the church; in fact, it made for a pretty unsettling combination that left me a little dumbstruck as I walked in. Same island counter, same two stoves, same industrial-sized refrigerator... Only the table was truly different, the one in the church being an ancient, massive construct of solid wood, while the one in here had a more modern design and a much lighter look.

"I mix a mean bloody Caesar, you know. No stupid human hang-ups to watch out for, so we might as well break out the good stuff." My young friend said, oblivious to my little personal episode of 'The Twilight Zone', sticking her head into a huge chromed refrigerator. She came out with a bottle of vodka and one of hot sauce in one hand, a container of tomato and clam cocktail in the other. Turn it, you just could find that stuff. It was rare, pretty freaking expensive and my mouth watered just at the sight of it. "There's plenty of wine to choose from in the cellar downstairs, too. Or we could raid the liquor cabinet, if you feel like something with a little bit more kick."

"Huh, no, no thanks." Hearing her expectant silence, I shook off the uncanny feeling and stopped my examination of the alternate reality kitchen so I could answer her. "I'll take you up on that bloody Caesar, though." I asked her, then reminded myself where I was, in whose company I would spend the evening, and changed my mind. "On second thought, if you could make that a virgin, it'd be great. Vodka's not the best idea right now."

"Oh? You're not a teetotaller, are you?" Erica teased as she poured a generous measure of clear vodka into one of two glasses she produced from one of the cupboards. "Don't tell me you can't hold your drink. Your badassery's going to take a hit otherwise."

"Not in a house that's going to be shock full of vamp pheromones soon, I don't." I explained, turning my head to the hallway from which we could hear both guests conversing in a nearby room, and new arrivals being greeted in. "I'm not worried anyone will make a pass at these," I fingered the demon scars hidden beneath my skin through the scarf I hadn't discarded, "but if I start drinking now, I can guarantee I'll be so sugared I'll roll under the table before dinner is even served." I did, however, want to sample that clam cocktail, though. Turn take humanity and its damn terror of tomatoes. You'd think they still rolled out T4 Angels every other week they were so scared...

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that. It's... pretty smart, actually." Erica froze, like she couldn't believe I'd had that much foresight.

"Try not to look quite so shocked and awed..." I crossed my arms and grumpily muttered, giving the young vampire a bemused look that made her chuckle wonderfully and smile sheepishly at me under her long polished obsidian bangs. I don't need to tell you the sight of her blew what little offence I'd taken away like a dust mote in a hurricane.

"Sorry." To my profound joy, the beautiful smile stayed plastered to her face as she expertly rimmed a second glass in coarse salt and mixed me my drink before appropriating the first as her own. Only once she leaned against the counter to enjoy it after handing me mine, when I raised my glass in a toast to tomorrow, to a future she had to remember was still there, did it falter, replaced by a look of mixed sadness, flickering resolve and tentative hope. "To tomorrow." She barely murmured before raising her glass to her lips, and...

"I hope for your sake there's been a misunderstanding with your glasses, young lady." Mr Randall rumbled as he walked in through the hidden door in the kitchen that led to his wife's lair, taking in the scene with naked disapproval in his eyes. Instantly, Erica jumped upright, miraculously without spilling the richly red drink she'd been about to gulp down, and for the first time in over a week looked like the red-handed seventeen year-old she was. "Are you feeling well? Is your nose clogged up, honey? I think you mistook Rachel's drink for yours, but clearly, you should have smelled the rather generous amount of vodka in it..." Mr Randall said, irony tinting his tone of voice while he pressed the back of one hand to his daughter's forehead.

"Da-ad... Come on, I'll be legal like, next week. What's the harm in one drink?" Erica twitched away and complained, though I couldn't help but notice she put her glass down with a little too much haste not to be feeling guilty about the, why yes, rather generous, amount of vodka she'd poured herself.

"You'll be eighteen in a little over a month," Mr Randall corrected her unyieldingly, unfazed by the doe eyes his youngest made at him, "at which point you'll be free to consume as much alcohol as your little heart desires. Until then, however, you will give Rachel her drink and take yours, and head upstairs for a shot of decongestant. Unless you mean to tell me you weren't just being a good hostess and this wasn't an honest mistake? Because I seem to recall a chat or two we've had on the subject of drinking before you come of age, and what would happen if you didn't stop doing it."

"Alright, alright, I get it..." Erica dejectedly grumbled and stormed out vampire quick, leaving her father, I, and her untouched glass behind in a puff of angry incense.

"And go see your grandfather once your nose is cleared." Mr Randall called out after her, before turning his attention to her abandoned drink, and to me. "Too hard?" He asked me as he picked the glass up, appropriating it for himself.

"I don't drink in the company of this many vampires. It's just not a good idea. No offence. If you meant with Erica?" I shrugged and tasted my own drink, its hot, spicy flavours exploding wonderfully in my mouth. "Your house, your rules. It's not my place to say."

"I'm not sure if I want to throttle whoever taught her to mix this, or shake his hand." Mr Randall said, finishing his own taste with a satisfied little click of tongue. "Although I suspect it was either Kisten or Piscary." He left the statement hanging there. No need to mention neither man was, if indeed guilty, in any position to get a stern talking-to from Erica's dad.

"Yeah, I know." I said neutrally, pushing my hip off the counter. I wasn't quite comfortable in the older man's presence, and was about to walk out aimlessly, possibly hoping to stumble upon Erica in whose company I'd at least force my in-laws into a semblance of civility, when he stopped me.

"Rachel, wait." Mr Randall told me.

"Is something the matter?" I paused and asked, a little cool and on guard. It's not like the man and I had suddenly turned best buddies after all. I hadn't forgotten the cold treatment he'd given me during our brief acquaintance.

"No, nothing. In fact things are almost going well, all things considered. That's exactly the point." The older man said. "I wanted to thank you for what you've done for my daughter once more. It's in large part thanks to you that catastrophe in the cemetery was averted." He grimaced a bit at the reminder, like the memory of his three beloved girls verbally tearing into each other tasted sour to him. "It's not the first time I've been wrong as well. I owe you a deeper apology. I've been giving you the cold shoulder ever since we first met, and it was not fair of me. If you don't think too little of me already and are willing to hear me out, there are some things I think I should explain to you." He asked, gesturing for me to take a seat.

"As long as you're not planning on chewing me out, I'm listening." I said neutrally as I sat down.

"I can't say I begrudge you that guardedness." He nonetheless winced, and sat himself down across from me, his fingers intertwined on the table. "To start I want you to know that I never had anything against you personally." He began. "I never made the effort to know you well enough for that. As far as I knew before today, you were only an intriguing mark on my daughter's radar. Ivy's obsession with hunting you made no sense to me, especially since she was willing to give up so much for you. The way she quit the I.S., what it cost her... I never fathomed you could mean so much to her. I thought I knew my eldest, and trust me when I say she was never a romantic. When Ivy loves, she does so deeply and ferociously, but falling in love, or even forming friendship, was never easy for her. It never crossed my mind she could have with you, never mind to such an extent."

"Oh, I hear that. It took me a while to wrap my head around the idea she even liked me that way too." I agreed with a little scoff. When I first met her, I could have pictured Ivy dating, going out, finding random hook-ups and making them beg at her slightest whim, even collecting admirers (before I found out she was independently wealthy, with her expensive fashion sense and her high-class Nightwing bike, I was secretly convinced she had a sugar daddy or three on the side), but definitely not pining longingly after an average-Jane witch like me. Looking back, there were hints here and there that Ivy was sweet on me, though I could really just make them out now that I'd seen the professional and sometimes distant way she treated most everyone else, but capital-L Love? Totally blindsided me.

"It made little sense to me, but there wasn't much I could do about her choices. She's a grown woman, and just as headstrong as her mother. It's been nearly two decades since I could sway her when she put her mind to something. In all honesty, I'm aware Ivy was disillusioned about her work at the I.S. in the end, so I could accept she threw away her inheritance to get herself out of such a soul-sucking position. I could even convince myself you were only a small sideline she pursued at the same time she did a broader goal, and not the actual reason she left in the first place. I only began to truly find her fascination with you unhealthy when Skimmer entered the scene."

What little rapport we'd established instantly flew out the window, riding on an erupting geyser of boiling jealousy. My face hardened and my eyes narrowed as I was completely set off like a straw fire. Even though Mr Randall showed no sign of aggression, he'd touched a nerve.

"Let me guess. If you must have a daughter in law, you'd rather have the picture perfect little blond blue-eyed vamp than me, right?" I asked bitingly, the mention of Skimmer reminding me of Nathalie's judgemental comments on Ivy's poor choices of partner. Crap on toast, her father or not, I didn't need another vamp sneering down his nose at me about how much better a match Skimmer would be for _my_ _freaking girlfriend_.

"No." Mr Randall replied much more calmly than I could have ever managed in his shoes. "Man or woman, vampire, witch, were or even human, I'd rather see my daughters with someone who has proven they can make them happy. Skimmer happened to do just that for Ivy a decade ago. Up until last week, I had no idea you could be more than a hearty snack." It was the first time I heard the man use vampire slang, and upset or not I didn't much care for it.

"Sorry, it's just..." I deflated and dropped my eyes to my shoes, reminding myself not to antagonise my father-in-law/dangerous vampire scion who could snap my neck with the blink of an eye. "I know you love her, but Ivy's my girl, and I'm fed up with people either second-guessing what we feel for each other, or worse assuming it's just some kind of cheap arrangement for blood and sex. I love her as much as she does me."

Mr Randall rubbed his face, sighed, and cleared his throat before resuming. "I see that now, but remember that dedication was one-sided at the time. You and Ivy were _not_ together back then, and she was pushing someone who moved across the country to be with her away, just to keep herself available. For you."

"Ivy had already grown too far from the girl Skimmer met, you know." I replied. This was an old topic, one I'd been around before. I thought I was over it, but I guess you never get used to your lover having that kind of ex. Stupid Ms Perfect... "They weren't really working out. Ivy admitted to that herself. Even if I hadn't been around, I doubt they would have lasted too long. Skimmer is just too into being a vampire. No offense, I just mean that Ivy was always struggling with those things."

"'Those things' are part of her, Rachel, and I am well aware of the anguish she felt over them over the years." Mr Randall sharply told me. "It's another reason why I would have greatly preferred Ivy to rekindle their old flame. Skimmer always had a way to bring her a measure of peace over her heritage."

"Even if Ivy herself didn't want to make peace with it?" I asked uneasily.

"Is it wrong that as her father I would have preferred that Ivy make peace with something she could never have changed rather than agonise over it?" Mr Randall stayed calm while I was getting agitated. Nice control he had there. Ivy must have inherited her mother's temper. "She was a living vampire with needs, natural needs, and the only wrongness to that was in her head. Skimmer accepted her, loved her as she was, and it was my belief she could have gotten Ivy to accept herself as well."

"I know." I reluctantly conceded after a long pause. "But isn't it worth something that I managed to give Ivy what she was looking for in her vampire needs?" For however short a time we had truly been together when she was alive, I had managed to prove to Ivy being a vampire could be beautiful the way she wanted it to be. It had to be worth something, and in my mind at least, it was more than anything Skimmer could have given her. The blond vamp had just been convinced the two of them could enjoy what Piscary had twisted Ivy into, and that's not jealousy talking, those were the words out of Ivy's mouth.

"That's between you and Ivy. As long as she's happy now, I'll have to be content with her choice of romantic involvements. Don't take this to mean I disapprove of you now. You've demonstrated your worth, as far as I'm concerned. Skimmer might have balanced out Ivy as a living vampire, but their upbringing would likely hinder her now. You're a much better candidate to help my daughter remember herself as she is now." That's all he said, yet I got the distinct feeling that, even as he fell silent, there was more the older man wasn't telling me. His eyes were too haunted, his demeanour too guarded. Honestly, I should have known better at this point than to go sticking my nose in any vampire's baggage, but he and I were near family now that I was dating (and more) his daughter. I wanted us to lay all of our cards on the table

"Was that all it was, then?" I asked with narrowed eyes. "You were just being a father looking out for your big girl, trying to make sure she got a good match? That's noble, but I'm not sure I buy it."

That must have hit a nerve, because with a deep, loaded sigh, Mr Randall pushed off his seat and rose, turning his back to me so he could pensively gaze out the window at his back, overlooking the estate's many acres of backyard.

"What makes you think so?" The older vampire asked me.

"Other than basic math? Like, you said you were 'wrong again' and you have only told me about one wrong? Just a gut feeling. That and I've dealt with vampires a few times in my life. If there's one thing I learned from the experience, it's that your situations are almost never simple. I don't _know_ you're keeping something from me, but if you aren't, then your initial distrust of me is one of the most down to earth display of solicitude I've ever seen coming from a vamp. It's downright... plebeian, actually."

"You're no fool at all, are you?" Mr Randall asked rhetorically, and I shrugged. "But then again, Ivy would not have fallen so hard for you if you were only a pretty throat to sink her fangs in. There was more to it than that." He admitted after a few seconds gathering his thoughts. "Suffice to say that Ivy's pursuit of you threw a wrench in the plans I had for her."

"What 'plans'?" I asked suspiciously. Again, I'd heard a few so called plans vampires tended to concoct for one another, and I could count on no fingers at all the ones I'd thought sounded like good, wholesome ideas. Even if I didn't particularly liked him, I respected Mr Randall's devotion to his family, and I didn't want to lose that respect.

"Did Ivy ever tell you she was born outside of wedlock?" Mr Randall asked me without turning around. If there was a purpose to the question, I didn't see it.

"No. Well, not exactly." I responded, slightly thrown off by the sudden curveball. "I know you and your wife had her really young, so I did assume it was the case, but it's not something she ever brought up. I don't see what that's got to do with anything, though."

"You mustn't." He agreed. "If you want to understand why exactly I wanted you away from Ivy, however, I have to take you back to the very beginning, when Annabelle and I first became acquainted and fell in love."

"When I first met Ivy's mother, both of us were in a similar situation Ivy was with Kisten and Erica was with Seth; engaged in a politically arranged marriage, nearly from the moment we were born. The difference was that we weren't meant for each other, despite quickly growing very fond of each other. We were young, but we quickly got to the point we became inseparable. A problem, as you can imagine. You must understand this was not that long after the Turn, and the rules of old held much greater sway over us still. We couldn't simply elope, or break off our engagements like Kisten and Ivy did. We needed the consent of our parents and masters. My family has ample monetary assets, but it was severely lacking in prestige. The Randalls are influent enough, but they are young blood. I can only trace my lineage back a hundred years, barely a third of the heritage flowing in Annabelle's veins. It was inconceivable our families, or at least the Tamwoods, would go back on their previous arrangements to allow us to be together."

"So how did you manage to end up married, then?" I asked, curious to see how this could possibly relate to Skimmer being with Ivy.

"Annabelle found a way in our oldest traditions, one that we were probably too young to exploit, but also too infatuated with each other not to. We had our first child."

"You do mean Ivy, right?" I wondered with no small amount of dread, because I didn't want to hear Ivy had another sibling somewhere, or rather what had become of them if she didn't.

"I do." Mr Randall acknowledged, to my relief. "We weren't solely motivated by ruthless calculus, however. Don't think for a second we had Ivy just so the two of us could be together. We wanted her dearly, but circumstances forced us to turn our dreams of a family into a desperate bid for the life we wanted. Annabelle was young, but she was fiercely determined not to let anyone keep us apart. She delved deep into vampire traditions and laws to figure out a way to overrule our parents and masters' decision. The key she found was the rule of reciprocity. It's basically an old edict put into place to protect the interest of lesser families from more aggressive breeding stratagems masters can come up with. If the woman in a coupling holds the greater name, she is honour bound to give her chosen mate an heir as well."

"Only if the woman does?" I asked, not quite liking that. Society had given women the short end of the stick throughout history on a great many occasions, but in my idealistic opinion that was no reason to do the same to men.

"Yes. That way, a female vampire who claims a fitting but lesser mate for a night in order to conceive a child, she, or more likely her master, cannot simply discard him once he fulfilled his purpose unless he releases her."

"I still don't get why this rule of yours goes only one way." I frowned. "What if a male from a greater family forces a female from a lesser one to give him a child, then tosses her aside? That's no less wrong." I said, though honestly, right or wrong likely had nothing to do with it at all. When it came to vampire, they were always working an angle, and almost never a nice one.

"Mostly because no male this callously interested in his breeding line would do so. You're thinking in terms of conventional DNA transmission, Rachel, like humans, weres, witches, where half the genes of the offspring come from each parent. On that basis, you would be correct to assume such a law would go both way, but vampires don't quite function the same way as most other species. In our case, the percentage split hovers around sixty to forty, in favour of the mother."

"And I'm guessing that those extra genes make a difference? Wait..." I held out a hand as a connection clicked in my mind, "you're talking about vampire traits, aren't you? In-utero infection by the vampire virus?"

"Exactly." Mr Randall nodded in approval. "Vampires share a great deal of DNA with humans. The parts that we do not have in common are almost exclusively transmitted from the mother's viral strains. It's why the strength of the mother's line is the sole determining factor of the potency of the child's blood. It's also why throughout history, vampire have been one of the cultures privileging daughters over sons. Only they can extend bloodlines. Evidence even suggests we were fully matriarchal long ago, before our dissolution into human society along the rest of Inderland. An unbroken line of women from one generation to the next bolsters the potency of the virus, allows it to evolve, mutate and adapt faster, which is why Ivy and Erica, Kisten, and to a much greater extent Skimmer, are genetically further along than a vampire of more common birth like myself. In comparison, males only bring 'human' traits to the table when it comes to breeding. That's why they're the ones were getting the short end of the stick handed to them. As long as they're healthy and fit, their stations don't matter so much as their good looks or intellects, unless they're used to set up political alliances. They're much more liable to be used and discarded." It made sense in a way. Selective breeding certainly explained why there were comparatively so many fair, blond and blue-eyed vampires, despite the genes being just as recessive in them as they were in other species. Vamps do love their pale complexions.

"So, why do vampires keep both names, if only the mother truly matters?" I asked. "Wouldn't it make more sense for all children carry their mother's name, like most humans do with their father's?"

"There's a difference between the name and the bloodline, Rachel. Even though in this day and age, they're used almost interchangeably, it's technically a mistake. Bloodlines are the ancestral measure of our genetic worth, the purity and potency of our blood. Names are a form of aristocracy we inherited over time from humanity, as we became less distinct from them along the rest of Inderland. Once the old conflicts were laid to rest and martial might took a backseat to influence, wealth and beauty canons, names and families became for all intents and purposes the more valued of the two... not that a long living bloodline isn't a great source of respect in our inner circles."

"A millennium old, unbroken line..." I murmured, the thought occurring to me this was something Mr Randall himself had mentioned the first time we met. "That's what Skimmer has behind her, isn't it? A thousand years of mothers and daughters, all carrying Nathalie's blood." That also explained why bloodlines the likes of Ivy's and Skimmer's were rare; having only male heirs would end a bloodline. It was not something I had time to contemplate, however. As soon as I said Nathalie's name, the quiet sound of cracking glass slowly breaking under the crushing pressure of vampire fingers filled the kitchen. I looked up, startled to see Mr Randall struggling not to shatter the glass in his hand, murder clear and present in his eyes. Without a word, the older vampire walked to the sink and poured down what was left of his drink, and just as quietly strode to a nearby trash can where he dumped the now-ruined crystal glass he'd been drinking out of.

"I'm sorry." The man apologised once he got his emotions under control. "Even after all this time, it's still hard for me to hear that... _woman's_ name." He might have said 'woman', but I think you can guess his tone suggested the word could be swapped with a much nastier one. You know, one that starts with 'B' and ends in '–itch'.

"You and me both." I responded, though I had my doubts I truly did understand. Ivy's death was relatively recent. Even if I'd grown much closer to her and mended much of what I thought had been irrevocably broken between us, I certainly still felt rage at the monstrous woman who'd murdered my lover. Nathalie's actions had torn this family apart, even when it had ways to go to mend itself after Mrs Tamwood's awakening. Why should he have forgiven her?

"To answer your question, yes, Skimmer does indeed descend from a long line of women, stretching back centuries. It's not irrelevant, but I'll get to that. What I want you to understand is that I've fought all my life to be with Annabelle and give us the family we wanted. We got what we hoped for, but we also had to pay the price for it. Annabelle offered herself as Scion to Piscary in order to keep him from paying our transgressions, and Ivy, too much heed. I had to give up my career plans in order to work for him, make myself too useful to discard out of hand." Somehow, hearing him speak about his people's customs, I wouldn't have been surprised to hear this dream had involved some form of teaching or another. He seemed to have the sting for the subject.

"In the end we earned ourselves nearly seventeen years of peace by playing the part of the perfect little vampire couple honouring their fealties to their master, only stepping out of line when our daughter's safety and integrity were in jeopardy. Eventually, once Annabelle was sufficiently reassured Piscary wouldn't use our compromised marital status to separate us, she asked to give me a child of my own name, even though we knew that would resolve her debt to me, and thus cancel out the one guarantee we had not to be separated. She was worried, we both were, but she was tired of us merely getting by. We finally married when Ivy was around twelve, and Erica was born about twenty months later. Two beautiful little girls, and the most remarkable woman I ever met... they were perfect, all three of them." His eyes were misty, the memory probably bittersweet. It didn't sound like those days were perfect, but in that moment, I seriously doubted the man gave a rat's ass, he would have given anything to go back to them. I felt a little nauseous knowing how exactly this story ended now that I was learning how everyone involved had sacrificed to get even that much. It was hardly the first time I thought I would never trade my semi-difficult childhood for Ivy's gilded nightmare, but it was something else to hear about it from her father, in this beautiful mausoleum of a house she grew up in.

"But everything went wrong when Ivy came of age, didn't it?" I murmured. I knew this part well, and so I decided to take over while pain rendered my father-in-law speechless. "Piscary took too much interest too soon, so you sent her away once she was seventeen, so she could finish high school in peace."

"Yes."

"California. Some boarding school near San Francisco. Far from here. Deep into the territory of a rival vampire of Piscary's. Some place that should have been out of his reach."

"It sounded like a good idea in theory. Risky, perhaps, but Ivy had status and, I thought, gender preference on her side. Nathalie wouldn't have let any of her affiliated undead lay a finger on her, not unless she herself did first. The woman is notorious for her sexual preferences, but before she met Skimmer, Ivy herself never displayed a hint of bisexuality. The likelihood of an encounter between them was between slim and nil. It all seemed sound."

"It was, but it wasn't, as well." I said. "Ivy turned out to be into both men and women. It just took someone else who'd been with a master vamp before to make her see it."

"I still don't know if it's serendipity that brought the two of them together, or if Nathalie somehow plotted for Ivy and Skimmer to be rooming together." Mr Randall picked up after me. "I suppose there's no point in wondering. She fell for Skimmer. I like to think the girl was guileless, but Nathalie did use the affection between them to lure Ivy into her clutches. When he learned of her transgression, Piscary..." The older man choked up, not quite crying but definitely unable to think or talk about what came next.

"In his sick and twisted mind, Ivy dishonoured him. So he took her mother away as punishment." I murmured, my heart clenching both at the sight of my interlocutor and the memory of a very similar look on Ivy's face when she was confronted by the consequences of her youthful mistake. It took me a little while, but I got it now, why he would despise Nathalie even more than I did. He'd lost both a wife and a daughter to the loathsome bitch, and he'd been aware of the root cause and his hand in it.

"When we got what was left of her back, Annabelle was just a ruined shadow of her former self. Piscary was neither clean nor quick dealing with her. He broke her completely before granting her her first death. All of her morals, all of her resolve, he tortured out of her. For all intents and purposes, she was brainwashed by the time she bled her last." Rage replaced his grief while he recounted his wife's final hours, one whose twin burned in my own heart. Was that why Mrs Tamwood was now obsessed with her line and her vampire prestige at the expense of her family's happiness? The strong and kind-hearted woman Mr Randall described her to be certainly didn't bear the slightest resemblance to the frigidly aristocratic undead vampire she had become. Piscary's handiwork, at its finest ladies and gentlemen. Hope your stomachs are sturdier than mine felt then, because I was suddenly grateful it was nearly empty.

"You hate him as well." I realised, remembering the first time we met, and how he'd seemed to take Piscary's side against his daughter when she'd come to him for aid.

"Of course I do." Mr Randall growled. "What kind of man wouldn't despise the monster that destroyed his wife and forced itself upon his own flesh and blood?"

"I'm sorry." It was my turn to apologise. I'd misjudged him as well. "I should have realised when we met it was just posturing for my benefit."

"It was. I could never have told Ivy what I said then if we were away from prying eyes. I didn't know you yet, not well enough to let you see how flawed Piscary's power base really was. I never could voice how despicable I found him before his death. Open defiance cost me and my family too much as it is."

"You tried to do what was best for your family. It's admirable, even if it... backfired." I swallowed when Mr Randall met my gaze, his eyes unsurprisingly black as pitch.

"Good intentions are a cold comfort at times."

"Hear, hear." I murmured with a thought to Kisten and the circumstances of his death, my role in them and the injustice of it all. "You fought the system for them." I sighed morosely. "I get it. I still can't figure how Skimmer used to fit into your plan, though, or why you'd dislike me. I was the one who put Piscary behind bars. I don't exactly work within vamp societal norms either."

"You did, but that was a temporary solution, and no prison cell could keep him from mentally violating Ivy whenever he felt like it. You couldn't give her the safety and distance she needed. I'd hoped Skimmer could, the same way Annabelle did with me." He dropped that statement like it was obvious, but all I could do was blink incomprehensively.

"Bu-... I mean..." I laughed nervously, because oh boy, was I not getting it. "You mean you wanted Ivy and Skimmer to have a kid together?" My face fell when he nodded. "How the heck would that even... I suppose it's possible with science and a sperm donation and all, but... what would that accomplish?" Okay, I know it's possible for a woman to carry another couple's child, so I suppose with a bit of help Skimmer and Ivy could have had a baby that would belong to them, but how could that translate into Ivy's salvation? Even if one of them gave birth, wouldn't vamp law take into account that the mother hadn't really contributed to the genetic potluck? Or would such old traditions not take modern science into account?

"Reciprocity, Rachel. It's been the key to my marriage, and it could have been the key to saving Ivy from Piscary." Again, I chuckled uncomfortably. Mr Randall sighed, as if I was a slow school kid he was getting a bit weary of trying to explain a subject to. "I know it probably sounds insane to you."

"Hum, yeah, kinda. Sorry, I don't get it. I mean, even if Skimmer carried one of Ivy's eggs, that child wouldn't have belonged to her in genetic terms, right? And that's what matters."

"Wrong." Mr Randall corrected me. "You're still thinking of traditional genetic transmission, Rachel, which I just explained doesn't apply to vampires. With a little help, as strange as it sounds, a vampire child can have three parents. Even if she wasn't the originator of the portion of genes traditionally attributed to the mother, Skimmer would have contributed to the child's genes through exposure to her viral strain. One part from an anonymous or carefully cut off donor, one part from Ivy, one part from Skimmer," Mr counted on his fingers, "and the end result would have been a child that carries both Skimmer and Ivy's lineage, and the Claymor name. Skimmer would thus have been honour bound, and gladly so, to provide a second child to carry Ivy's name."

"And the child would have carried Nathalie's bloodline as well, wouldn't it? Her millennium-old line would have been more than incentive enough for her to challenge Piscary for her claim to be its master, and she would have needed to nab both Skimmer and Ivy as well." I reasoned, my mind spinning now that I finally understood just what it was Mr Randall had attempted. My God, that was convoluted, but if it had worked... crap, Ivy just might have been saved. More than saved, she might have gotten the life she wanted, with a kid she never trusted the world enough to have in life. Crap on toast, no wonder Mr Randall had thought I was seriously interfering. It was a small wonder he hadn't put out a hit on me, considering the lengths he'd gone to to ensure his family's integrity.

"A plot to manipulate the woman who was indirectly responsible for her mother's death into granting Ivy asylum wasn't what I'd call ideal, but at least she would have been safe from Piscary. Nathalie's reputation is far less nefarious than his, and she's simply too powerful to be crossed. Plus Skimmer is her favourite, which would have shielded Ivy from Nathalie's attentions, whatever they might have been."

_It isn't right, damnit... no man should have to make that kind of deal with the devil to protect his own children. _I thought, nauseated and light-headed.

"Piscary would have killed you over that, you know." I murmured, then thought about it for a second, and realised the rat bastard would have likely done worse. "Or even better, he would have replaced Ivy with Erica."

"No. I wouldn't have given him the chance." Mr Randall growled, the thought of an undead's hands on his daughter obviously as pleasant to him as it was to me. "I might have sworn fealty to Piscary when I married Annabelle, but I haven't severed all ties with my old Camarilla. That I wasn't born into his was another reason why it was unthinkable for us to marry through regular means. I still have ties to my old master, and favours I can call upon. Even if I'm expendable as far as breeding goes, Erica carries Piscary's bloodline, and the Randall name thanks to me. She's invaluable. No master would turn a claim over her down. No, the worst he could do, he already did the day he killed Annabelle. At most, he could have outcast her, expelled her from the Camarilla and declared her persona non grata in this city, but I've been preparing for this eventuality ever since the day she died."

_Oh, my God... that's why..._ "That's why you don't let anyone else feed her, isn't it?"

"It's one of the reasons, yes." He replied, his black eyes void and lost. He didn't seem surprised I knew about his wife's exclusively marital diet, but at this point, it was no doubt clear to him Ivy had confided a lot about her family in me. "It's taken its toll, but I've conditioned myself to sustain her on my own. There are other benefits as well for an undead in post-death stupor to feed exclusively on someone they had a deep connection with in life. They form deeper... bonds, that help their minds mend." He caught himself, like he'd nearly let a secret slip. _Rule one of aura bonds, you don't talk about aura bonds; rule two of aura bonds, you don't fucking talk about aura bonds..._ "She still has a long way to go, but Annabelle has gotten better much quicker than she should have, considering how difficult and drawn out her first death was."

"I see." I said, more glad than ever Nathalie had helped Ivy through her transition, because God help me I didn't think I could have done for her what Mr Randall had done for his wife. I didn't have that selflessness.

"Now you know the whole story." Mr Randall inhaled sharply and fixed his gaze to the ceiling luminary dangling high over the kitchen table in an effort to get his pupils back to an acceptable dilation. He'd spent much of our conversation slightly hunched on himself, but as he stood more upright now, a weight seemed to lift off his shoulders, like he'd just shed a great burden.

"I'm the first person to hear it, aren't I?" I inquired. "The whole deal, from start to finish?"

"Yes." Mr Randall nodded. "You can imagine these aren't confidences I could make to anyone while we were under Piscary's thumb."

"Yeah. Yeah, I can."

"Now that you know, do you-"

I cut him off by grabbing his arm. The motion surprised him, but he made no move to remove my hand. "Mr Randall, you don't have _anything_ to apologise for." I told him insistently. "Especially not to me. Ivy... she's the best thing that ever happened to me. Without her, I can safely say I'd be dead by now. You helped keep her whole through the mess of this life you had. That's more priceless to me than words can convey." I squeezed his arm harder, not that he really noticed, and earnestly looked him in the eye. "Thank you. Thank you, for everything you did, and everything you tried to do."

"You're welcome." He had to look down at me due to his height, but the appreciation in his eyes kept it from being condescending. "Annabelle and I have done all we could for Ivy. I don't know if it was all in vain, but now... now it's up to you, Rachel." He took my hand as he solemnly declared. "My daughter's in your hands now. Please, look after her."

_Tell me I'm not the only one who feels like he just granted me Ivy's hand..._ I thought. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, or about another vampire pinning his hope on me.

"I... I want to. I want her to be happy." I reluctantly answered. "I'll try, but in all honesty, I can't promise I'll... I don't think I can do... what you've done for her. Or for your wife." Especially not what he'd done for his wife. God, that scared the living daylight out of me. If it made me unworthy of Ivy's love, well... the universe could go screw itself. It was her choice who she gave her heart to.

_Now, if only I could convince myself of that..._

I expected Mr Randall to be disappointed by my admittance of cowardice, but rather than let go of my hand and step away, he gave it a comforting squeeze and offered a compassionate and understanding smile.

"You never know what you're capable of until life forces you to choose between watching what you care about fade away or taking up arms to save it. Until you've faced that choice and come up short, don't assume you're too weak to do what needs to be done to protect her."

_Entre l'amour et la mort... who would have thought you could abandon her?_ From the back of my mind, Nathalie's loathsome voice taunted me.

"I promise." I murmured. "I promise I won't leave her alone in the dark."

"Attagirl." Mr Randall said approvingly.

"I might need you to give me a pointer or two once in a while though." I smiled wanly and said. "You've been doing this a lot longer than me."

"Oh, deal then." He shook my hand and let go. I let out a long sigh. Don't get me wrong, I was glad we'd cleared the air, but damnit, I said I didn't want people relying on me the way Heidi and Mr Randall were, and I meant it. I'm a runner. I help people through brief crises that require radical solutions and expertise, and then walk out of their lives. I didn't want to be anyone's anchor. I was Ivy's girlfriend; I signed on for companionship, closeness, and hot monkey sex, not to be her conscience, and even less to be her source of deeply connected blood, or whatever Mr Randall was to his wife. She could cry on my shoulder all she wanted. Who, why, when, where and how to eat people, though? She was on her own. It would have to be enough, because it was all I could give.

With that lovely thought in mind, I walked out of the kitchen in search of Erica or Heidi and Reed, leaving Mr Randall behind as he began to fill a tray with assorted drinks for his guests. I'd only made it a few feet out in the hallway when I heard a soft, very familiar and melodious voice coming the opposite way.

"Ian, I need to speak to..." Mrs Tamwood rounded the corner, and suddenly, I was staring my own death in the face. "You." The undead hissed angrily through her filed, pointy teeth. "Rachel Morgan. Annabelle Tamwood. You're sleeping with my daughter? I don't believe we've ever had the pleasure."

If by pleasure, she meant nailing me to the wall with a staggeringly powerful vampy aura, then she was right. Doubtful, but even then, we'd never been introduced, which might account for the pulse still beating wildly in my chest, the blood cascading in my veins and the air filling my lungs, traits she shared not a one. The way she glared at me, though, certainly hinted she wouldn't mind making us just a little more alike in that regard. How nice of her.

Seriously, isn't bonding with your in-laws just swell?

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A/N: So, when is the next update coming? Hopefully within the next two weeks. I've got most of the next two chapters done, so I'm going to space them out a little, give myself a chance to work on them, give them a bit of extra polish. After that, it might be a long while again, I don't know. The story's going to pick up a bit then, and hopefully I'll be more motivated to pump out chapters if they're more thrilling to write. We'll see.


	24. Chapter 24

A/N: I'm sorry about that latest delay, guys. This chapter kind of took on a life of its own. It did NOT want to end. I guess I fail yet again... :-(

If it doesn't feel that long, it's because I ended up splitting it in two. The next part is pretty much done. It shouldn't be more than a few days until I can post the next one, and the chapter after that is almost done as well. It's almost back on track now! I hope that translates into more, quicker updates now that I'm back to writing the stuff I originally planned to...

Hope you enjoy!

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Chapter 24

_Crap on toast, will this day _ever_ end?_ I thought as I slowly backed away from the clearly homicidal undead slowly closing in on me, my whole body taut with the instinct to flee that would get me killed in an instant if I gave in to it. Seeing her up close, it was even clearer than before Ivy got her height from her dad, but while you might think she was diminutive crossing her on the street, trapped in a corridor with her, her petite size only made me feel her absolute lethality was concentrated further. Her curves were a little more generous than Ivy's athletic built or Erica's lanky teenage body, likely as a result of giving birth twice in life, but she still looked perfectly slick and predatory, the picture of an ice queen from hell. The Tamwoods' distant Chinese roots were markedly more obvious in her than in either of her daughters, evident in her thick, straight inky black hair, more rounded face and slightly more slanted eyes that somehow managed to be a shade or two darker than her hair. Mrs Tamwood was so vamped out right now, I couldn't believe I wasn't bleeding yet

"Mrs Tamwood. Uh, hi." I said, regressing into an awkwardly shy seven year-old girl in the blink of an eye. "You're right, I don't believe we've ever met in uh, person. I think I saw you at Trent- Councilman Kalamack, that is, his wedding."

"Yes, I recall seeing you there as well. I believe you arrested the groom that night. How delightfully droll of you." Mrs Tamwood said, her voice dripping venomous irony.

"Yeah, that was... uh, pretty neat, huh?" _Losing your ability to discern sarcasm and general mockery. Let's see, that's sign number eighty-seven you're freaking out, right? Or is it seventy-eight? No, that's right, seventy-eight is needing a change of pants. Not there yet. I hope._ What? Hysterics are just about the least chaotic part of my life. I might not alphabetise the cans in the pantry like Ivy did, but I've gotten very good at losing my cool in an orderly fashion over the years.

"It was a riot. Literally, of course." Mrs Tamwood coldly leered at me, and I briefly had a flashback of a time when Ivy used to berate me by using the Richter scale to rate my job performances. "No, it was most certainly not 'neat', Ms Morgan. In fact, it lacked any kind of finesse, or consideration. Sloppy and sensationalistic, which I suppose suits you like a glove, but it does make me wonder just what your instructors at Inderland Security drilled into that airy head of yours. I seem to recall holding our new recruits to higher standards in my time." Yeah, it's just my luck that Ivy's mom used to be _director_ Tamwood, the top dog of the IS a while before my time. She could rail at me all day long about my methods, and I couldn't even tell her off about it because if she hadn't died prematurely, I would've been calling her ma'am if I'd ever, by some miracle, met her in the tower. She probably knew more about the runner trade than I did. "You make it doubly disappointing that my daughter could fall for you so completely as to lay down her life. Truly, if your magical aptitudes evaluations were not so woefully lacking, I would accuse you of enchanting her somehow."

_Okay, if she can tell me what colour underwear I have on, she's officially gonna get the 'creepiest undead of the week' award._ I mean, meeting your mother-in-law is unnerving enough, but when she's gotten farther along your chosen career path than you could ever hope to, she's an immortal, super deadly, super ruthless, super sexy apex predator AND to top it all off she knows everything about you? Yeah, I'm just going to start running the other way now.

"Hum, well if you want to be really picky about it, I'd say Ivy did most of the... seducing?" I meekly attempted to downplay my so-called guilt (Ivy HAD pursued me more than I'd pursued her, after all; it's not cowardly to set the record straight, right?), but Mrs Tamwood didn't look picky about it. At all. In fact, I suspected merely drawing breath made me more than complicit enough to justify tearing my throat out right where I stood.

"And you should have turned her down, if you knew what is good for you." Mrs Tamwood snarled, taking a threatening step into my personal space. "Ivy and I might have been estranged, but she was a good girl before she met you. She would have come around back to her family. Now she's ruined, and it's your fault." I sharply gasped as she stepped closer to me, her terrible, captivating eyes locked on mine robbing me of all my combative instincts long enough to let her get me in her reach. This was it. That's how I went out, with my neck snapped or my blood drained, and once Ivy learned what happened, Cincinnati would burn to cinders in the inferno her reprisal.

...Or at least it would've probably happened like that if Mr Randall hadn't stepped out of the kitchen right about then.

"Belle." He whispered so quietly the word barely reached my ears. If it wasn't for the breath I'd been holding and Mrs Tamwood suddenly relaxing a fraction leading me to take a glance around looking for the source, I would have likely missed it. "Belle, stop."

"Ian..." Mrs Tamwood just as quietly breathed out her husband's name. Her eyes fluttered close, a look of peace turning her bestial mask into smooth, flawless features, her fingers contorted into claws slackening and her arms falling loose at her sides. Slowly, and so deeply it would have been a bit comical if I hadn't just come off a brush with death, the older woman inhaled, taking in the scent of the inhumanly devoted man who loved her above all others wafting towards us. The air between them hummed with... something I could not identify for the life of me, a kind of soothing, enveloping energy emanating from the tall man and seeping slowly into the undead woman, stealing away her ire and rage. Thankfully, this also had the welcome side-effect of sapping the strength of her hunting aura, fuelled as it was by her bitter resentment of my presence in her daughter's life, as well as my continued existence. Though I didn't dare move a muscle yet, seeing the undead getting talked down allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief... which was unfortunate since it got Mrs Tamwood's attention to focus back on me, her leer not quite so threatening anymore, but still scalding and menacing enough I had to press my back against the wall like I meant to go through it, in an effort to put some space between myself and her wickedly sharp teeth.

"Ian, no. Stop this." The undead ordered her scion, though her voice carried less forcefulness than I would have expected a master to bring to bear against a disobeying underling. A second current of energy began to circulate in the hallway, colder and sharper, jagged but not stronger because of it, this one finding its source in Mrs Tamwood and its target in her husband standing opposite her.

"I don't think so, Love." Mr Randall briefly staggered, but despite his frail appearance the man still had the strength to spare challenging his wife, at least in a contest of will. "I'm not going to sit by and let you make an ass of yourself."

"Don't you talk to me like that!" Mrs Tamwood protested, her head whipping to the side (and away from me, thank goodness) so she could address an arctic glare to Mr Randall. In all likelihood, this was exactly what he must have intended for her to do, because as soon as her eyes fixed on him, she began deflating again, her aura waning in strength until it finally dissipated into nothingness. About time, too; I was getting light-headed, barely breathing like that. As ungracefully as I'd ever seen an undead move, Ivy's mom staggered away from me, looking at once lost, angry and impotent, not a combination I'd seen many vampires display. Without hesitation, Mr Randall took the initiative and walked towards her with a calm, understated confidence, all the way into her personal space, his hands settling in a firm, steadying grip on her slender shoulders. The woman seemed to welcome him, reluctantly, but with a joy that was undeniable as well.

"What are you feeling right now?" Mr Randall asked, his voice patience and compassion given sound. "Can you tell me that, Belle?"

"What do you think I'm feeling? I'm angry, and with good reasons!" Mrs Tamwood nearly snapped at her husband. "I'm so angry..." She repeated, more quietly, more subdued somehow, as if her mere proximity to Mr Randall was enough to make these feelings too insubstantial, too vaporous for her to hold on to them.

"Why?" Mr Randall asked his wife. "Why, Belle? Why are you angry?"

"Because that witch... that witch corrupted our daughter."

"She did?" Mr Randall sounded almost sardonic. "How so? How do you figure Rachel corrupted Ivy?"

"You know how!" Mrs Tamwood snarled, her long teeth flashing between her carmine lips. "Stop infantilising me, Ian, you know very well what I mean. What she's done."

"All that she's done, we've done as well, Belle." Mr Randall gently argued with her, his hand steadily cupping her cheek even though his wife looked like she might start foaming at the mouth. "All she's done is be herself around Ivy, just like you were with me. The two of them just clicked. We never planned to fall in love either. Do you remember that?"

"I... I... That's no reason... Just because we..." She blinked, and of all things sputtered. Funny. I'd never seen a vampire sputter before. Or blink when they were vamping out either. Then again, all I'd ever seen from a master-scion relationship was mental violation, heartbreak and assorted abuse. This wasn't a side I'd really considered could be present before today.

"... Made a mistake?" Mr Randall finished the thought for her, sadness darkening his eyes. "Is that what we are to you, the girls and I? Mistakes?"

"No!" Mrs Tamwood exclaimed in the first display of passion I'd seen from her that wasn't murderous. "No, of course you're not."

"Then can you blame Ivy for being with the one she loves, when we did the same and, according to the words just out of your mouth, we didn't make a mistake?" Mrs Tamwood seemed to slump forward into her husband's welcoming, awaiting arms.

"What are you saying?" Mrs Tamwood murmured against his chest, her face burying in his shirt, like she was seeking comfort in his warmth and his scent, just like Ivy did with me. "I'm being silly? I'm 'making an ass of myself'?"

"You're lashing out, Belle. You're angry, and you're right, you've got good reasons to be, but Rachel isn't the cause."

"Ivy..."

"... was murdered. And she was not responsible, no matter how much you disapprove of her."

"I hate it when you do that..." Mrs Tamwood quietly complained, although whatever vamp or scion or just plain husbandry trick 'that' was made the undead shiver and snuggle even closer to him. The sight of them was unreal, considering I was convinced I would die a gory death at the hands and fangs of that very woman mere seconds ago, and I still barely dared to breathe, much less move.

"No you don't." Mr Randall smiled down at her, his arms wrapping her up protectively, like she suddenly was the petite and delicate woman she would be if not for five millennia of evolution moulding her into a perfect predator. Slowly, with a tenderness so absolute I nearly had to bite back tears, he began to rock her back and forth, holding on to her until the last of her anger dissipated into nothingness. "It's okay. I know it's hard for you to make sense of your feelings."

"You make it sound like I'm insane..." She looked up at Mr Randall, and asked with a vulnerability that shouldn't have surprised me but still managed to. "I'm not, am I?"

"No. No." Mr Randall immediately reassured her. "No, of course you're not. You're just... prone to silliness sometimes. When you're agitated. Don't think like that, Love."

"I don't want to be insane." Mrs Tamwood said, almost childishly. "I don't want Ivy to be right when she calls me an insane old bat."

"I'm pretty sure she doesn't call you that." Mr Randall chuckled. I knew Ivy didn't call her mom that... often. Not unless the fight had been really nasty and she needed to vent.

"Liar. You know she does." Mrs Tamwood told him knowingly, a smile, small but real and honest, slightly quirking the side of her mouth as she looked up to meet his gaze. She held his eyes for several seconds before that look of amusement turned into a frown.

"I... I did this, didn't I?" She asked as she ran a careful hand along the fatigue lines criss-crossing on her husband's gaunt face, realising seemingly for the first time the effects their exclusive feedings were having on him. She looked appalled.

"Belle, you didn't do anything I didn't want you to." Mr Randall took her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, but unlike his previous displays of affection, his undead wife didn't go along with this one. With an angry hiss, she shoved him into the nearest wall, making him grunt and me yelp with the speed and sheer suddenness of her movement. With one hand on his chest, covering his heart, she held the much taller man there, looking him defiantly in the eyes.

"Kiss me." She demanded unflinchingly, both her eyes and his black as sin. For a second I thought Mr Randall was ignoring her order, but then I noticed the way his wife's fingers were digging into his chest, rumpling the impeccable dress shirt he wore, despite the fact she wasn't applying any force onto him at all. He was the one pressing against her, and he was quite unable to make her budge, despite opposing his whole body to the strength of her sole slender arm. Eventually he lowered his head in defeat, and Mrs Tamwood relented, reaching up to cup his face in her delicate hands.

"You're so weak, Ian." She said without a hint of condemnation or accusation. "_I've_ left you so weak. I can't fathom how I could miss it. Your heart is struggling with every beat." Like she had with her husband, she covered her own heart with her hand and closed her eyes. "How could I not feel it when it beats next to mine? What kind of wife have I been to you these past few years?"

"Belle, let me explain..." Mr Randall attempted to get a word in, but in a move rather reminiscent of Ivy, she silenced him with a darting finger to his lips.

"No." She told him categorically. "I know. I understand what you've done, and I am so very grateful you brought me back from the abyss. It is not a debt I can ever repay."

"You don't owe me-" He blurted out, emotion strangling his voice. "You never owed me anything. You know that."

"Silence." She cut him off with a growl that was somehow half endeared, half threatening. Only a vamp could come up with that. "It's over, Ian. This folly of yours is over. You've carried me as far as you could. I need to start walking on my own now."

"What do you mean?" Mr Randall asked, defeated.

"I mean that it's time I hunted again, Love." She answered with an eager, carnivorous smile. "I've relied on you for sustenance for too long. It needs to stop, at least until you can build your strength back up. I'm not going to lose you as well."

"I don't want to share you." It was Mr Randall's turn to growl, but whatever his possessive tone, it prompted Mrs Tamwood to grab him into a ferocious embrace and kiss him with breath-stealing passion.

"And I love you for it. Things will not change between us because I'll feed from others, Ian. It will only be blood, I promise. I'm not making this an open marriage... so don't get any ideas, either." She teasingly warned her husband once she was done eating his face. "I still fully expect you by my side every morning..."

She said more to him, but at this point, it was clear I'd completely slipped the couple's mind. I blocked it out before I ended up adding to my gallery of psychological scars, and while they were otherwise engaged discreetly slipped back into the kitchen to catch up on my breathing and nurse my battered pride. Yeah, some runner I was, to be terrified of my mother in law to the point I lost it worst than I did in front of armed gunmen. I didn't even know what it was about her that scared me so, but it was undeniably there, whatever the reason. Perhaps it was simply a matter of not hating her the way I did most other undead that could make my blood turn to ice; I do have a tendency to let anger override fear and sense, after all, but as coldly as she treated me, I knew I would have a hard time working up more than a half-hearted resentment towards my mother in law. Not after I heard her story. She'd sacrificed her life for the woman I loved, _we_ loved, and I just pitied her too much.

The sound of heels clacking smartly across the hardwood floor of the kitchen made me look up from the counter I'd hunched myself over to catch my breath, just in time to see Mrs Tamwood stroll casually across me into the secret door that led to her underground lair. I quietly swallowed, my heart rate spiking even though a vampire you can hear coming is about as harmless as they come. She looked calm and relaxed, which was comforting even if she was ignoring me, something that likely had to do with the rapidly fading bright red bite mark on her long, slender neck. She'd obviously given a little sugar to help break in the news she was going to start hunting for herself to him, which would also account for the slightly dazed look and dilated pupils of her husband when he followed her in.

"Come meet me downstairs when you're done with our guests. I still need to talk to you, in private." She said as she worked the keypad giving her access to the basement apartments, her tone warm but more business-like than it had been a minute prior. She smiled to him over her shoulder, incidentally getting me back into her field of vision, and turned a bit more towards me. "Ms Mor... Rachel." She tipped her head to me, before heading down the flight of stairs. I relaxed as she began disappearing from view, but just as I thought I was out of the wood, her voice echoed up from the hidden stairwell.

"If you hurt my family in any way, girl, I promise I will hurt you more than you ever thought possible." She told me in a voice cold enough to make my skin crawl, my eyes foolishly meeting her terrifying cinnamon glare. She wasn't even using a hint of vampire tricks; her sheer presence was enough to make me break out in cold sweat from fifteen paces away. This was pure, maternal fury, something that I never thought could be just as scary as any vampiric hunting power. Through no effort of my own, my chin dipped forward twice in an automatic, irresistible nod of acknowledgment. "Good. I'm glad we understand each other. Have a good night." She regally dismissed me and walked down one more step before stopping one last time to give herself a quick shake, like she didn't quite understand what had just happened, shrugged once, and finally vanished, leaving me almost boneless in relief.

"Wow..." I breathed out. "Most formidable woman you've ever met, huh?" I addressed Mr Randall, who was still staring at the spot where his wife had vanished. He looked better, if pretty much dumbstruck. A lot better, actually, like the little pick-me-up his wife had given him had done a world of good. "That's actually almost reassuring. I don't want to see what a woman more formidable than her looks like."

"Huh?" Mr Randall responded absently, and I noticed, his black eyes beginning to tear up.

"You okay?" I smiled nervously at him.

"For the first time in thirteen years, I've seen my wife again." Mr Randall murmured, emotions making his voice raw and strangled. "Is it wrong that in this moment, in the middle of all this pain and chaos... I'm happy somehow?"

"I take it she's not like this most of the time?" I asked. He shook his head and drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

"No. I've never seen her this... alive. Not since she awakened. It's working... It's really working. I've doubted so often this day would ever come, but... She's coming back to us."

"She shook off her stupor? Really? So quickly?" I knew the brain damage undead suffered during their transition usually meant they remained nearly catatonic for about thirty years. If Mrs Tamwood was really back, then Mr Randall was definitely on to something with his enforced exclusive feedings.

"I don't know. I think she's starting to, but it's still unstable. Maybe emotional spikes help her break free, at least momentarily, but..." He sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. Looking disheveled, one of the lesser side-effects of making out with an undead. Mrs Tamwood had gone to town on him, and it showed. "It looks like anger works best, if that scene she caused at the cemetery is any indication. Damn, I'm not looking forward to picking a fight with her just to see again, if that's the case." He chuckled mirthlessly. Having been on the wrong side of her ire, I could relate with the desire to keep Momzilla appeased and happy.

"Just invite me and Ivy to diner instead. It ought to work." I joked. "I'm happy for you." I said, and it was heartfelt. Everyone could use some good news these days, and Mrs Tamwood pulling through this hard, dangerous period of her life was definitely good news for Erica and her dad. Ivy might argue, but I'd be sure to knock some sense into her if she decided to be a bitch about it. "It can't have been easy to see her inert like that for so long. I hope she comes back to you and Erica."

"Thank you." He said distractedly, still staring.

"You should probably do as she says." I nudged him when it became clear the older man was still too dumbfounded to do anything but stand there. "Mustn't keep a lady waiting." _She might start teasing you on the phone too, if you do..._

"R-right." He rocked into motion, turning his attention back to the abandoned tray of drinks he'd left behind to come save my witchy butt from getting snacked on by his not-so-tender half.

"And you might want to straighten everything out before you head out, too." I quipped, motioning to my own attire to indicate I what I meant. Let's just say his hair wasn't the only thing not quite in perfect order. He looked, well, like the aftermath of a vampiric quickie in the hallway. Funny that.

I left him to his drinks and thoughts of his wife and walked back out, glad to see I wasn't shaking anymore. _I still got the recovery time down,_ I sarcastically pated myself on the back that I could come within a hair's breadth of getting eaten and still casually walk out of the encounter without quaking in my boots. I'd had too much practice for my own good. Still, being able to walk and think straight after a close call with my undead mother-in-law had its uses, like leaving me with enough clarity of mind to notice there was a woman casually leaning against the wall on the way out, one that somehow didn't look out of place at all, despite having no business in this part of the estate, separated from the other guests. Frowning, I opened my mouth to address her, having my suspicions the black-haired and green-eyed woman was no other than Angel, but before the confrontation on the tip of my tongue made it out of my mouth, Reed and Heidi walked in from the opposite way, and taking my eyes off her for one second was enough for the woman to vanish. Further evidence she was not as inconspicuous as she looked, and probably an Elven ninja scion under the cover of an obscuration charm.

Both vamps looked sharp as ever, but it was clear neither of them had shaken off the doubt my reluctance to pledge myself to Ivy was plaguing them with. They looked grim and worried under their professional airs and dark suits. I definitely understood what they hoped I could do better now that I'd seen Ivy's parents interacting, seen how tightly scions and young undeads were bound, but sadly, I was more convinced than ever I could never do what they expected of me. That was just too much responsibility, even if Ivy herself had assured me she didn't need me to provide for her to the extent her father did for her mom.

"How much of that did the two of you see?" I asked them, a bit surprised looking back that they hadn't intervened to get Mrs Tamwood away from me.

"Enough not to be worried." Reed answered dismissively, his whole body language harshly contrasting with his usual easy-going demeanour.

"Now that's good to hear." I sarcastically snapped back. "I suppose you want to tell me she just planned on hugging me with her teeth, too?"

"Oh, that's rich. First you make it very clear you're not interested in helping us, then you get pissy because we didn't swoop in to save your-"

"No, he doesn't." Heidi diplomatically stepped in. "He means that until she put a hand on you, we had to assume Mrs Tamwood was only trying to scare you. We couldn't start a scuffle over anything less, not without causing an incident."

"Which she'd know if she actually gave two shits about what's going on out there." Reed muttered, earning himself a glare from Heidi.

"Reed, not here. Not now." She whispered to him, gripping his arm in warning. "She did help us, remember? Just a week ago." _That's right, I helped you save Erica. Shove that down your pipe and smoke it, why don't you?_

"Yeah, and thanks to that, her hide is safe, no matter who wins or lose. Big personal cost she paid there."

"Reed!" Heidi hissed before I had a chance to give him a piece of my mind about that last statement. "Not. Here."

"All she has to do is bleed a little for Ivy. And not even the way we do. How hard would that be?" The big man argued, pointing an accusing finger at me. "Not that hard, considering she's already boning her!"

"You know there's more to being a scion than that. It's a big commitment." Heidi countered, and Reed's jaw dropped, while I went red with embarrassment and anger at his last comment. Dickhead. "Don't look at me like that. I'd feel better knowing she's committed to our side too. A lot better." She added with a vulnerability that shocked me. It was understandable she'd be worried, though. While Reed was a valuable resource as an experienced team leader in SIU, Heidi was essentially a grunt, and a first gen one at that. She wasn't anyone's pet project, and she'd have even less shelter from the coming storm if Ivy's bid for mastery over Cinci failed, or if her grip on her tattered humanity ever slipped, which is where a better witch than I would come in. "It's her call. We don't have a say in the matter."

"We never do." Reed growled, helplessness making his fists clench at his sides. "Shit."

"I know."

"You're entirely too sweet for your own good, Ms Andrews." Reed wryly declared. "Did you know that?"

"I'll have you know, Mr Connor, that I'm not sweet. I'm just cooler headed than you."

"I don't want... I think about anything happening to you, and it makes me want to punch a wall." The tall man before her shuddered, and the brunette vamp moved a little closer, wrapping both his arms in a firm, steadying grip.

"And I can't tell you how grateful I am for that." Heidi soothingly assured him. "Come on. Take a breath before you pop a vein. I'm going to be fine. We all will. Right now, we've got a job to do. We can talk about this once we're off the clock."

"Yeah..." Reed finally dropped half-heartedly. If he really believed her, it didn't show all that much on his face, but at least he wasn't spouting insults and snide insinuations at me. I doubted I'd like what I'd hear if I could read his mind, but at least he was civil enough to flip the switch back into professional mode and stop chewing me out.

The evening proceeded smoothly from there. I wasn't sure what to expect from the other guests when I walked into the parlor where they'd assembled on the mansion's third floor, but fortunately, I didn't have to introduce myself to anyone; as soon as I walked in I was accosted by the only other non-vamp in the room, Carson, boyfriend and fiancé to Seth's big sister, Melissa.

"Rachel Morgan?" Carson called me out with a worried glance at the vamp bodyguard and the douche I had in tow.

"Present. You must be Carson, right? I think we're the only two here without a dental plan that comes with sharpening."

"Yup." The male witch smiled and shook my hand, giving me a little jolt of equalizing ley line energy that tripped a few long dormant instincts in me, and made me size him up with what I admit was more than a little appreciation. What? I was sleeping with Ivy, sure, but I didn't suddenly lose my appreciation for my own kind, especially fine specimens like this one. No harm done in looking. He was a big man up close, not quite rivaling Reed in sheer size, but unlike the male vampire, he carried himself a bit awkwardly, like he wasn't all that familiar with his bulk, most likely because he'd only fairly recently put it on. Not a lot of guys who dated lady vamps appreciated the fact their girlfriend could effortlessly pin them to the floor the second the whim took them, and it tended to lead to some kind of compensation, like pumping a lot of iron and maybe in his case gulping down a homebrewed muscle toning potion or three. He had the strong redwood scent of an earth practitioner. I didn't really approve if that was really the case, but still, the witch was sharply dressed and a pleasure to look at; once upon a time, I would have considered making a pass at him, but longing thoughts of my own vampire lover doused that little surge of hormones right quick. Besides, poaching on a vamp's territory is a bad idea, no matter what species you are.

"It's nice to see another witch here." Carson amicably told me. "Back in Washington I've been spending so much time amongst vampires, don't even remember the last time I spoke to another one of us in person."

"I heard about that. You and Melissa are out there fighting the good fight, huh?" I said, slightly pivoting my head to the side, where I knew Reed stood, as if to dare him to scoff. To my satisfaction, not a peep came from him.

"You could say that. Or you could say we're banging our heads against a wall. It would be an equally apt description of where we're at now." Carson dryly replied.

"Trouble?" I asked.

"Just a few assholes with hard-ons for the status quo, bogging down Melissa's projects, but she can tell you all about that herself. I'm sure she'd really like to meet you, unless you're meeting someone?" He asked with a glance to our surroundings, to see if he was keeping me. A quick look around the room told me the only other acquaintance I had, namely Erica, was not present at the moment, and so I shook my head.

"Frankly, I'm a little surprised you're walking up to me. Most witches and warlocks avoid me like the plague these days. I'm not sure you're doing your reputation any favour." I said, falling into step with the hunky witch, off whose butt I had a little trouble keeping my eyes, so he could lead me to his belle.

"Right." Carson scoffed dismissively. "Some of the biggest a-holes I mentioned? They happen to be members of the Coven of Morals and Ethical Standards, which despite what its name implies is pretty much rotten to the core. I liaise with those bastards all the time. Oh, and don't even get me started on vampire politicians of the 'not quite alive' variety. Pillars of freaking society, I tell you." He snickered darkly. "Trust me, I'll make my own opinion of you, and so will Melissa. She'll love you."

"Not a fan of the Covens, huh?" I asked him. Miraculously, I'd never had a run-in with this very notorious ruling body of the witches' and warlock's government, something I thanked whatever star I was born under for every morning before going to bed. These guys were bad news, and they could make my life even more difficult than it already was. Being almost shunned is still a lot better than actually being shunned, and if the latter ever happened, they were the ones I would have to thank for it.

"Nope." Carson gave me a lopsided grin. "Their abolishment is the next step in our mad quest for world domina- I mean, our noble efforts for a better, freer Inderland."

"That's... maybe a little extreme." I pointed out. "Not to mention anarchistic."

"Oh, I know we need regulations, but not the way these people operate. Our laws shouldn't be dictated by a power-pandering cartel of rotten old men and dried-up hags who haven't gotten the memo the Turn's been over for forty years. We need a new set of administrations, and kick the old one out to the curb with their sanctioned black magic kill orders and their goddamn code of silence."

_I like your style, at the very least... _ I thought with a slightly frisky smile. Yup, if we were both single, odds are I'd be flirting with him, but cheating on my significant other has never been my style... unless I'm trapped in an elevator with a gorgeous vampire, on my way to (near) certain death at the hand of a master bloodsucker; I _might_ steal a kiss under those completely excusable circumstances. Oh, and I guess I might share blood in a van when I'm desperate for closeness and comfort after getting betrayed by an ex with a funny notion of secrets and harmlessness. That totally doesn't count. Maybe, a big maybe, I might push my best friend's buttons until she pretends she's about to bite me, but ends up turning the table on me and kisses me instead, and enjoy the outcome, but that's...

Okay, maybe faithfulness is not my strongest suit after all. But I was just looking! And appreciating! And not even drooling! And honestly, with the way Carson looked at Melissa as we approached, my libido and I would have been dead in the water anyway. He might enjoy the company of someone who didn't consider hemoglobin a food group, but it was immediately clear who his heart belonged to when we got closer to his grieving girlfriend. Melissa had claimed an isolated spot to be alone with her thoughts, where a cozy couch had been settled near one of the great bay windows lining the walls, offering a great view of the neighborhood and the river beyond them. The vamp's pansy eyes were fixed on a point beyond the horizon, giving no sign she was aware of her surroundings, even less of our presence.

"Hey, look who I found, Mel." Carson gently roused the vampire by pressing a kiss to her blond curls, his large hands enveloping her slender shoulders.

"Carson, don't coddle me now..." Melissa pleaded in a tired voice that suggested she was rather in dire need of that coddling. "I've got it together. You know I'll start bawling again if you... Oh, hey. Hi." The blond vamp perked up instantly as she recognised me, life flowing easily back into her eyes and demeanour. "You must be Rachel."

"Was it the witchiness that gave me away?" I smiled at her as she gracefully took to her feet despite having to disentangle herself from Carson's embrace, leaving the witch who'd been leaning against her off balance and nearly tumbling head over heel, and came face to face with me to shake my hand, sparing not a blink to our height difference. There was an aura of confidence about her, one that exceptionally wasn't backed at all by any vamp tricks. She had the looks of a natural-born leader, that much was immediately apparent.

"Well, I do happen to be familiar with it." She smiled back, tipping her head in Carson's direction, and though it didn't reach her eyes, it was clear she'd bottled up the worst of her grief for the moment. Vamps are social creatures, after all. It's harder for them to be miserable in the company of others. No wonder my own reclusive girlfriend gave herself such a hard time way back when. Isolating herself might have coincided with her convictions, but it went against her nature as a vampire, something she'd definitely gotten over, considering how aggressively she was campaigning for Cinci now.

"And you're the famous Melissa." I took her offered hand and shook it, her small, delicate-looking hand gripping mine with just enough strength to hint at her power without flaunting it. Very confident of her. "Nice to meet you. I've heard good things."

"Probably not from anyone who knows me, then." Melissa gave a dry little laugh. "You would be calling me infamous otherwise."

I laughed quietly at that, already deciding I liked her, an impression that was only reinforced as the night progressed in their company, Erica's mysterious absence slipping from my mind with the flow of conversation and companionship. Indeed, none of the actual occupants of the Tamwood-Randall estate were doing much to grace their guests with their presence, Mrs Tamwood never having emerged from her lair and Mr Randall vanishing after her once he made a brief appearance. I can't say I wasn't a bit out of my depths talking with the two of them, but Melissa was patient in exposing her theories and plans to me.

"It's a brilliant idea, actually." Carson said as we sat over drinks, after I'd expressed doubts introducing sexual education courses tailored to specific species would be the first step in helping living vampires break free. "Think about it. What's the first contact a master typically has with a youngling? Initiating them to their bloodlust, right?" He questioned me, and I nodded. "Never mind that in ninety-nine percent of the cases, the kid's young enough to make it statutory rape. Bloodlust is something big, scary, animalistic sometimes, no offence, Mel," he addressed his girlfriend a quick apologetic smile, "but it's overwhelming, and the master helps them make sense of it, even if it's twisted sense. It's what first defines their relationship; the master has all the answers, and there's no reason to go look elsewhere. It's brainwashing, really."

"It's the basis of their power, how masters set themselves up as protectors in the eyes of a new generation. After that, it's easy to make everyone else who's just like them out as potential threats." Melissa continued. "If we take away that first contact, we can weaken the hold they'll exert."

"Not to mention we stop systematic pedophilia, too." Carson muttered.

"But aren't young vampires unstable when they begin exploring their cravings?" I asked. Heidi's story was pretty fresh in my mind; even if only one in a hundred vampire teenager shared her hunger, well, we could have a serious body count on our hands. "I love the idea of stopping that, don't get me wrong, but those aren't exactly kitten learning to hunt mice. Vamps are dangerous when they lose control. Ivy did with me once or twice, and... well, it wasn't pretty. It took a lot of dumb luck and a blast of magic or three to get me out of those encounters alive."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but Ivy's a basket case." Melissa declared with easy familiarity and a small, fond smile that took the sting out of her words. "When it comes to blood. And it's not her fault. Case in point, she's the way she is because she got hurt and twisted by her master. If it wasn't for him, I'd bet my first life she would have grown into a much healthier woman. We're dangerous, I'll give you that, but not much more than a witch or a were. If you give us a chance to mature and find our balance on our own, or with a little help from someone without ulterior motives, I know we won't have any problem integrating into the rest of society."

"Just how well do you know Ivy?" I asked. I know, what Melissa had just said was important, but my mind had gotten stuck on the fond way she'd mentioned my lover.

"She's a friend. A long time friend. A few of us were born at roughly the same time, me, Ivy, Kisten Felps, a few others. We grew up together, me and her, although Kist was always closer to her than I was." Melissa answered evasively, and added when it was clear I wasn't convinced, "We... we had a summer fling too, when we were younger. Nothing really serious, just a couple of months when she got back from California. I think Ivy's got a sweet spot for blonds, actually." She nervously ran a hand through her voluminous blond curls, so much tamer than my messy flaming mane. "She was aggressive about her sexuality back then, and I... I wanted to annoy my mother, so you know, we... experimented together. It was fun, but it was clear from the start fun was all it was about. We fizzled out long before she met you." She reassured me, but I was still torn between relief there was nothing left between them but friendship and knowing there was another remarkable woman in Ivy's life. Oh, and also shallow chagrin I might not be my lover's type. Call me insecure, but that's not something that's easy to hear when you're surrounded by genetically superior sexual predators idolised the whole world around.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa... Hold up there. You like girls too?" Carson asked like this was the revelation of the decade, which it shouldn't be, considering the much higher than usual instances of bisexuality in vampires. "You never told me that."

"No, I never told you that." Melissa shot back, her voice decidedly more growly all of a sudden. "I never told you, because I knew exactly where your mind would wander to if you knew. For the record, it's not going to happen."

_Oh, right... _ I thought, feeling silly. That's_ where his mind went. Straight into the gutter._

"Wha- I didn't say anything! I didn't even think about..." Melissa addressed him a scathing leer, and the big man instantly dropped what he was about to say in his defence and raised his arms in a gesture of placation. So soon after losing her brother, it made sense the blond vamp's territorial instincts would be overly protective of anyone and anything she considered hers. "Okay, okay, in the interest of preserving peace, I will apologise for my weakness. I'm sorry, I'm a guy with a pulse, and I had a stray thought. There, happy?"

"Men..." Melissa simply groaned in disgust, and I sympathetically patted Carson's shoulder, hastily enough to hopefully avoid triggering his girlfriend's territorial instincts.

Diner was announced a little after that, and Seth's mom ushered us and the rest of the guests over to the dining room where I spent a fair chunk of the evening with the two of them. Most of the diner party was comprised of Mrs Tamwood's followers with few of them having sympathies for Ivy, so I had Melissa and Carson pretty much to myself.

"Just about everyone in here will want to avoid me like the plague." She told me when I asked her if she wanted to go sit with someone else. "Most of them have sworn allegiance to Mrs Tamwood. Their political views are much more conservative than mine, and that doesn't go away just because there's a truce on."

"I figured there were more reasons than just a family feud for Ivy and her mom to go to war with each other." I observed while we took a seat at one end of the enormous massive wood table set to accommodate the guests.

"There are. A few of them at least. Mostly, it's the old struggle between tradition and progress... sorry, I mean change." She corrected herself, but not before Carson caught it and snickered.

"Your bias is showing, Hon." He murmured in her ear before taking his seat.

"I'm not biased." She argued nearly petulantly. "I can understand the allure of sticking with the old ways. We've climbed to the top of the food chain following them, after all." Melissa declared, not quite sounding entitled to her perceived notion of vampires' place in society, but quite obviously convinced that they were. "But it's not moving forward. Never mind the abuse and the cruelty, the world's changing around us while we're too busy vying for control and power to change with it. Look at what the other species are doing. Weres are organising their packs into one coherent whole. Witches and warlocks regulate the uses of magic..."

"You mean assholes regulate the use of magic. When it suits their agendas." Carson interjected. "And it's not bias when it's the truth, so don't argue with me."

"I know. I know." Melissa said more quietly, a bit of steam blowing out of her tone. "Okay, scratch that. They still teach magic at universities, emit licenses. Witches show signs of progress, of forward thinking. Even humans are slowly learning to accept us. Look at the latest statistics, and you'll see the number of hate crimes committed by humans against Inderlanders is in free fall, while purchases of magical goods by them are skyrocketing. The whole world is moving forward, I'd like to think to a nicer place, but vampires aren't going along with it. We're still stuck in the shadows, even though Inderlanders made the choice to step out into the light forty years ago. Why? Because masters rule from the shadows, and we all have to be their perfect little puppets, and let them dictate every aspect of our lives."

"And Ivy wants to improve that." I said.

"It's in her platform, if you will, and I'm inclined to believe her. She certainly fought the system while she was alive. Plus, she has you as a prospective scion. It's a good sign she'd chose someone headstrong with morals and convictions. It means she wants someone to keep her in line. Otherwise, she'd just pick the most powerful and violent vampire she could find to use as an enforcer."

I groaned inwardly when she said that last bit, because goddamn, was there just ONE vampire in here not pinning their hopes on me, but I decided not to correct her. She had enough on her plate already without me casting doubt on the woman she'd thrown her lot in with.

"I would have thought you'd be opposed to both Ivy and her mother. You don't sound like you want to play this game at all." I observed.

"I don't." Melissa sighed in reply. "Until we can get the ball rolling and things begin to change for the better though, I'm still stuck on the inside looking out. Ivy definitely sounds like the better alternative in the meantime. It sure wouldn't hurt to have some sort of official backing too; otherwise I might have an unfortunate accident before-"

"Not going to happen." Carson cut her off categorically.

"Carson..." Melissa turned her attention to her lover. The big man wasn't exactly agitated, but it was immediately clear he didn't consider letting anything happen to his girl a possibility. Maybe I'd been wrong about the bulk of muscle he had on. Maybe it had nothing to do with insecurity at all. It could be he simply wanted this last resort if his magic failed him and he had to fend off a supernaturally strong attacker.

"No. I'm sure Ivy's a nice gal and all, but I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

"I know." Melissa appeased him with a soft caress over his muscular forearm. To my surprise, a twinge of pleasure came from my vamp scar, one that Carson also felt if the way his eyes fluttered a bit was any indication. The tricky vampire wasn't playing fair to calm her beau down; she was putting out soothing pheromones, and he was sure feeling them. Figures the two of them would be sharing blood too. Other than Melissa, I was probably the only one in the room who didn't donate on a regular basis. "I know, but we can still use the political capital of having her on our side."

"So long as we're clear this is just politicking." Carson replied evenly. "No girlfriend of mine is going to suck up to anyone just so she doesn't get capped. It's my job to watch your back, not any master vamp's." Melissa smiled and kissed him, first on the cheek, then lower, starting with a brush of her lips against his throat before she delicately grazed with her dainty little fangs.

"As long as it's _my_ back you're watching, and no one else's, I'm happy to give you the job." She winked and sultrily teased him, her pupils dilating a little.

Diner was a quiet and fairly painless affair, Carson and I taking turns keeping Melissa distracted from her grief, him by teasing and comforting her, myself by drilling her some more for information about her projects and plans. It ended up being a very informational night for me, as the blond vampire was more than happy to draw the broad strokes of vampire politics at a national level, and how she planned to change them. I enjoyed my time spent with them, but by the time most of the guests left around three, and they began to get on their way, I was also feeling a little depressed as well. Somehow, this evening had gone from me innocently attending to the mourning of a friend in need to getting neck deep in vampire politics and balking about getting involved every step of the way. Everything was a little clearer now, what Heidi and Reed fought and bled for, as well as what Melissa tolled to accomplish, but I still shuddered to think about giving in to what they hoped of me; that I could be like Mr Randal was, a closely bonded scion who would keep Ivy together and decent through the years, acting like a buffer between her tattered humanity and her monstrous underlying nature. I just didn't have it in me to pay such a steep personal cost, no matter what Mr Randal thought. I couldn't sacrifice my independence like that, not even for her.

By the time I kissed both of my new friends goodbye and offered them my sincere wishes for the future, I was the only person left in the Tamwood-Randal manor who didn't reside in the place, but although I was weary, I didn't follow Carson and Melissa out. I hadn't seen Erica for a long while, and although I wasn't really worried, I wanted to see her again before I left. Last I checked, she was still staying with me after all. If she planned to come back to the church, I wanted to be the one to give her a ride.

"You guys can go." I told Heidi and Reed before I headed back inside to look for my young vampire friend. "I'll leave in just a little while, promised." Reed didn't argue with me one bit, his hand plunging in his suit pocket to pull out his phone before I was even done talking. Unlike him though, Heidi gave me a long considering look, and I had to give her a reassuring smile before she agreed to follow her boyfriend to the street where he awaited the cab he'd dialed up. Turning around back the way I came, however, I was surprised to see a dark figure standing in the shadow of the foyer, clearly a woman if the lithe silhouette and long, lanky limbs were any indication. Upon closer examination, I found that she also had a familiar colouring; a pale complexion, black hair and slightly feline green eyes...

"It's you, isn't it?" I took a chance and asked the mystery woman, who tipped her head briefly forward, a few bangs not contained by her ponytail partially blocking her face from view. When she looked back up, Angel's obscuration charm lifted, and her piercing green eyes regained their budding familiarity, as did the sharp panes of her angular face and the smooth length of her artfully vamp-scarred neck. Seriously, after two centuries of feeding on her, Nathalie could probably turn her stoic Scion into a puddle just by letting her eyes linger a second too long on her jugular. I only had one really sensitive scar, and already it was hard saying no when a vampire decided to push my buttons.

"I wonder, has someone ever given you an answer other than yes to this question?" Angel tilted her head and asked. _My, my, we've got a comedian in the house..._ I thought with a roll of my eyes at her reply.

"Ha, ha. And I was wondering if I'd see you again tonight. Looks like Ivy left most of her people behind to look out for me. Don't I feel special..."

"You underestimate the numbers that answer to Ivy if you truly believe Ms Andrews, Mr Connor and myself constitute most of her people." Coming from anyone else, that would have sounded sardonic, but I had my doubts Angel even knew the meaning of the word. "You _are_ very dear to her, but leaving a few good elements behind to ensure your safety has hardly put a dent in her resources. She's still quite secure, I assure you."

"I'll bet." _And you just answered my next question. How nice of you._ "So she's really the one you serve now?" I stated more than asked, her previous declaration confirming my suspicions. Angel was loaning her considerable skills to Ivy's campaign to take over Cincinnati, and I had a pretty good idea why.

"For now, and as long as I feel she has need of me, yes."

"Hmph, thought so." I said, not quite liking the way she had phrased that last reply. "You're here as another bribe from Nathalie, aren't you?"

"Nathalie feels she has wronged you and Ivy enough to warrant lending my services as reparations." The rogue guardian replied neutrally, and my inner bitch leaned forward expectantly, hoping for any sign I was really getting under her skin. She was disappointed. The elf was cool as a cucumber, completely aloof.

"Mercy-killing Ivy and jumpstarting her powers weren't enough? Nathalie felt she had to lend her her girl-toy too?" I kept needling her, just in case my disregard for her and her mistress wasn't so blatantly obvious as to be visible from outer space.

"I understand I mustn't be your favourite person, Rachel. If I were in your shoes, I suspect I would be none too fond of anyone with ties to Nathalie either. Nevertheless, let us try and remain civil here, please. I was only tasked with safeguarding you. Making myself known was strictly a favour to you." Angel frowned, her pretty face turning frumpy. Though mild mannered (as long as you didn't try slapping her around), I suppose not even she liked to be called names or treated with as much venom as I was.

"Her scion." I rolled my eyes and amended with petty scorn. "Same difference as far as I'm concerned. A puppet's a puppet, no matter how pretty you paint it."

"I will take what progress I can, nonetheless." She said, keeping up her annoying passive-aggressive routine. Maybe if I dyed my hair blond, got pointy ears and eight months pregnant, I could actually stomp on her nerves enough to get her to yell... "I'm not your enemy, Rachel. I never have been. Perhaps you could start treating me as such?"

"You're not my friend, either." I grunted. "I'm not about to forget who it is you work for the rest of the time."

"I believe Nathalie is currently aboard a luxury liner somewhere on the Mediterranean, enjoying a love cruise with Dorothy. She is after all conspicuously absent, is she not?" She gestured to the empty space around us as she spoke. True enough, the oldest thing around had to be three hundred years old, at most. "As for me, I recall I already explained I'm my own person, no matter how close she and I are. If I were to condemn _you_ for the company you keep, or have kept in the past, I could find a great many reproaches to address you. It has been millennia since demons have been considered reputable company..." She trailed off, and I silently cursed Ivy's big mouth for filling her in on my associations, both past and present. Deflated by that rather accurate assessment of my hypocrisy, I shrugged and let go of a measure of the hostility I felt towards the elf. She wasn't Ivy's murderer, even if she associated with her, just as I wasn't a sadistic slave trading bastard, even if I had one on the demon equivalent of speed dial. We both had distasteful associations we'd made under less than ideal circumstances. Even if she was proud of hers, I suppose I could leave it at that.

"Fine." I muttered. "I suppose it should be reassuring she's got one more person on her side..." _If anything, that's one more person to catch a bullet for her..._ I snidely added in my mind, even though I knew a bullet was not exactly likely to be the cause of Ivy's final death, unless it came from one of those big-ass precision rifles that could tear a man apart from a mile and a half away... and the thought of Ivy on the wrong side of one of those was not one I wanted to linger upon for too long, considering the no-doubt precarious position she was in now after the scene she and her mom made in the cemetery.

"Something unpleasant just crossed your mind." Angel observed with razor sharp wit and intuition, and totally not because picturing the effects a large calibre bullet could have on my lover put a frown as obvious as the moon in the night sky on my face. "What is it?"

"Nothing." I answered, still muttering though it had more to do with the disquiet taking over my heart than my interlocutor's presence now. "On second thought, I am grateful you're here." I wouldn't say the elf beamed at that reluctant admission, but she did look pleasantly surprised. And I was glad. Angel had kept the job of safeguarding Nathalie for centuries. Odds were she was damn good at it, and now that expertise was at Ivy's service, in a time when my vamp could definitely use a deadly, experienced enforcer.

"If my presence is suddenly a boon to you, and considering I have spent the past month serving Ivy, it must mean you are concern about her well-being..." The elf mused out loud, easily piecing together my sudden change in attitude. "Do you think her position so dire? I assure you, she is doing quite well swaying her opponents' allegiances and securing her power bases. It is hardly a question of whether she will rule this city any longer, but when."

"Maybe that was the case as of this morning, but after tonight?" I asked disbelievingly. "She pretty much handed her mom victory on a silver platter. I may not like you, but I'll gladly have your freaking babies if you can help me get her out of this alive. Undead. Whatever."

It was my turn to be surprised as a short burst of twinkling laughter escaped the ancient scion. I must admit the smile and the shimmer it put in her green eyes gave what I had to admit was a rather fetching look to her face. "I'm sorry." Angel covered her mouth and centered herself, no doubt as self-conscious as I was how badly out of place her laughter felt in the solemn confines of the house. "I did not expect this comment from you. Forgive me. I have to reiterate Ivy is and will be fine. She is very nearly untouchable now, and barring tragic circumstances will remain alive for a great many years to come. Your worry over her is unfounded."

"But... the cemetery?" I asked, befuddled by her reaction. "Didn't you see her back down to one of her adversaries in front of half the vampire population of Cinci?"

"I saw her demonstrate compassion in her sister's time of need." Angel countered. "Not a bad trait for a leader, to know when the cost outweighs the benefits."

"It's a contest of strength they're engaged in, isn't it? How can you say that's not going to affect her in the long run? That can't be good for her, can it?"

"That is not incorrect, but it is a simple way to see it. Vampires don't rule via sheer dominance the way weres do. Raw strength is a part of the tests that determine who will arise as the next master of Cincinnati, no doubt about it, but it is not all there is to it."

"Meaning?"

"That no one wants a strong leader who abuses their position, sacrifices their underlings for power or causes pain for entertainment. A master vampire has privileges, but also responsibilities towards their people. How well they acquit themselves of this balance goes a long way towards determining their quality as leaders. Ivy showed her strength today by standing up to her mother, but she also showed compassion and decency by willingly removing herself when Erica was caught in the crossfire of their quarrel. If anything, I believe she earned herself more support than ever by doing so."

"I... I suppose that makes sense..."

"It does. Did anyone express concern that Ivy's bid might fail during the evening? Did Melissa?"

"No... no, they didn't..." And Melissa was certainly politically savvy enough to pick up on the possibility Ivy might have damaged her standing as a potential master. _Wait, are you suggesting she may have planned this?_ Much as I loathed thinking about it, was it possible Ivy had rushed to comfort Erica, knowing what would happen? Could she have willingly goaded her mother into throwing a fit so she could make herself look better in comparison? It would be horrible and ruthless, but... _No, not going there again. From now on, I'm going to assume she's innocent until proven guilty._ I decided and shoved the unpleasant thought away. Stupid resolution when dealing with that kind of being, you say? Well, odds are you're not sleeping with one, and if you are, well you're lucky yours doesn't get pissed when you second-guess their motives. Ivy had done good. I would call her later to tell her I thought so, and that was that. Case closed. There was no distasteful politicking to see here, no sir.

"Indeed. Do not trouble yourself overmuch with this. I fully intend to make sure both you and Ivy get through this ordeal unscathed. No harm will come to either of you, you have my word."

"I can handle myself, thank you very much." I scowled back, making her smile annoyingly at me again. She made me feel like a child, an impression I didn't appreciate at all. Then again I was give or take a tenth of her age, so maybe that just came with the territory...

"How interesting that you appraise me for pledging my protection to Ivy, yet reject me for hinting I would do the same for you..." Angel said thoughtfully, looking at me like a puppy dog that'd just done a cute but silly trick.

"I can handle myself." I enunciated more slowly this time around. Hey, it didn't look like she got the message.

"So can I. So can Ivy. One's strength should not make them so prideful as to refuse the help of others when it is freely offered, especially when they face adversity the likes of which you, and I, do. Yours are not challenges you should tackle alone."

"You know, as pretty as it is, Ivy's got a big mouth..." I muttered, which of course made the elf smile annoyingly some more.

"Not so much, no. She's been quite tight-lipped on the subject of her beloved, in fact. Your little courtroom drama with the demon Algaliarept has made the headline in more than just your local newspapers." I choked in surprise, my face blanching at the elf's casual dropping of Al's full summoning name. Goddamn, what was wrong with this woman? And how the hell had she gotten that name in the first place?

"Turn take it, are you trying to lure him here?" I hissed fitfully. The last thing this evening needed was Al crashing it. Just saying his name aloud wouldn't be enough to have him appear out of thin air in front of us in theory, but the demon had an uncanny gift for finding his unwanted way to me anyway. He might see vampires as a woeful waste of his time, but I wouldn't put it past the creep to stir some havoc here just to get a rise out of me. "How do you know that name?"

"There are many things you don't know about me, Rachel." The elf smirked in a manner distinctly reminiscent of her mistress, reading me like an open book. "You work with demons." Angel continued cryptically, a flicker of something disdainful passing in her emerald eyes. Not fear like some elves of my acquaintance, or brazen confidence like others, but disdain. Interesting. Considering her tremendous powers, I would have expected her to have taken a few lessons from one of my dark cousins. If she hadn't, well, that would put her well above Ceri or anyone else I knew in raw magical aptitude, and not level with my blond friend as I thought when they were about to blast each other to cinders. "That's your prerogative, but I made the choice not to, long ago. In fact, I went to extreme lengths in the past to make sure none of their kind could find me, or any child of mine I might someday chose to have."

"You know his full name. That's not something anyone who doesn't deal with demons should know."

"Acquaintances of his happened to be involved in my plot to achieve my freedom. His name came up. A nasty fellow, as I'm sure you know. I never did find out whether or not he was found guilty by association..."

"Huh-huh... Maybe you shouldn't be saying that to someone with my reputation, then. You don't want a known demon associate getting word back to them, do you?" I pointed out, not that I ever intended to sell her out to demon kind unless she _seriously_ forced my hand. Been there, done that with Lee, and in the long run it had only gotten Ivy shot when he decided to pay me back. In fact, my girlfriend's current predicament and less-than-alive condition could all be traced back to him. If he hadn't tried to have me killed when I took down that drug dealer a few months back, Ivy wouldn't have had to take that bullet for me. No bullet wound means no morphine, so she wouldn't have kissed me in a drug induced haze, and without that injury luring her back to Ivy's side, Skimmer would still be tucked away safely in prison. Without that kiss I wouldn't have overcompensated with Marshall, meaning there wouldn't have been that ugly scene in the church a month back that ended with the blond vamp storming out and straight into the awaiting arms of a psychotic rapist. Nathalie would have had no reason to come to Cinci, and Ivy would still be fully alive, if not necessarily with me. No power struggle, no opening for whoever had killed Seth to get his hands on him and Erica, no massive heartbreak for the young vamp, _and_ I'd never have had to meet Ivy's mom. So, yeah, _screw_ selling people out to demons. Even annoying elven Scions of even more annoying master vamps. You never know when fate's going to turn around and bend you over when you pull crap like that.

"Unless I seriously misjudged your character, not even the long standing bounty on my soul would tempt you to do anything with the knowledge." Angel calmly (and accurately) assessed me.

"What did you do anyway? Kill one?" I shrugged, kidding. "I don't see them caring so much. They're not exactly an altruistic bunch."

"It's the principle of the thing. They have enough self-preservation instinct as a species not to want their reputation as all-powerful beings damaged. Of course, they're much more upset about the damage I inflicted upon their precious collective veiling myself from their prying eyes." Angel shrugged, and again I felt the blood drain from my face. Her answer certainly implied she had managed to kill a demon, a feat that barely seemed this side of possible. I'd seen undead vamps who were no pushovers try and fail. This woman was either even more powerful or way craftier than I gave her credit for. I'm not sure which option made me more leery of her...

"Right..." I said wanly, feeling a little dizzy with information overload, and maybe a little something else. Inadequacy.

"Are you feeling well?" Angel inquired with something that looked like genuine concern to me when I leaned up against the wall for support.

"Peachy... just peachy." I breathed out with the last of a roughly exhaled breath. After meeting Mrs Tamwood, I'd been feeling tiny and edible, and now I was just feeling... inadequate, somehow. Not just because Angel apparently boasted far greater aptitudes and resourcefulness than I could see myself acquiring in the foreseeable future. No, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. No matter what happened in the turmoil of my life, I could always console myself with the knowledge I was a competent and powerful witch, if a bit of a loose cannon sometimes. Now Angel had demonstrated I could be outdone, even without resorting to demon magic or deals with the devil like I did, and that last buffer, that last refuge was simply swept away, leaving me hollow and depressed in the wake of the hopes I'd dashed and the responsibility I refused to step up to. Everything I learned over the course of the past few hours spun around in my head, circling me, pointing accusingly at me. Mr Randall, Mrs Tamwood, Heidi's mom, Melissa, Skimmer, even closer friends like Jenks, Glenn and David had given themselves up for the good of their loved ones. And worst of all was Ivy... my darling Ivy, who had laid down her life twice over for me. Everyone around me it seemed had committed such sacrifices, paid such steep prices for those they loved, while I... I wouldn't even consider letting a woman I claimed to love take what she needed from me in order to stay decent and sane, not to mention simply... animate, I guess. How did I compare, to any of them? I didn't. The most I'd ever given up for someone were my Saturdays I'd offered up to Al in order to rescue a man who'd tried to kill me on more than one occasion. More than I had for actual friends and family.

"And by that you mean you're not." Angel stated. Duh... how could someone so old be so damn good at stating the obvious?

"I'm gonna have to explain the meaning of sarcasm to you sometime..." I muttered, running a slow hand over my face, as if that alone could banish my grim thoughts. "Right now, it doesn't feel like we speak the same language."

"What is it that's on your mind, then?" The raven-haired elf questioned me again, once more surprising me with the very authentic-looking concern she displayed for me.

"... Have you ever woken up one morning and realised you're the biggest coward you know?" I paused before asking her. It's not that I exactly trusted her, but I felt I could use someone to talk to, and she had the only conveniently placed set of ears in the vicinity. Besides, with all that life experience behind her, maybe she'd actually have some advice for me. She was a scion after all, and the only non-vampire one I'd ever met.

"I can't say that I have. In all my years I don't recall a time I didn't number some sniveling coward or another amongst my acquaintances." She replied, her eyes on me studious and thoughtful. "Of all the things you could doubt, your own _courage_ gives you pause?" She asked me, clearly surprised.

"Why wouldn't I?" I scoffed. "I'm a stupid-ass witch who needed two years just to gather enough guts to admit she's in love with a girl. It's not enough that I was scared of my own feelings for Ivy, now I'm scared of committing to her. Hell I'm scared of giving her any part of myself other than my body, and I've been withholding even that lately."

"Are you now?" Angel asked. And smiled. Seriously, fuck her smile. Why did she have to smile like she was so damn fond of me? I'm not a freaking puppy. "You would be cross with me, simply for thinking more highly of you than you do yourself?" She asked when she noticed I was getting pissed at the way she looked at me.

"Why would you?" I scoffed.

"Why would I not admire you? I've seen enough of you to know you're many things. Brash and impulsive, to be sure, and you've made your share of unfortunate associations, but you are also very generous and caring, as well as ferociously protective of those you love. A coward is not how I would describe you. A coward would not stand up to the most powerful vampire on this side of the Atlantic the way you have. A coward would not rush into an obvious death-trap to save a friend. I've seen you do both of those things, and I've heard of many other exploits."

_Wait, you've seen what? You were there when we rescued Erica?_ I warily eyed her when she mentioned that. I sure didn't remember her lending a hand to get us all out of that mansion alive if she was. What the hell had she been doing? If she was here protecting Ivy, Angel sure had a funny way to go about her duties.

"I don't see you abandoning Ivy to her fate." Angel continued her little speech that I had to admit, made me feel a little bit better. "Are you telling me you would not fight for her?"

"I would but... it's not the same, is it? It's not a sacrifice. Fighting and helping people is just... it's what I do. I'll fight for _her_, not for her goals."

"People matter more to you than ideals or causes. Again, I feel to see the character flaw.

Everyone around me has given up so much more for the people that mattered to them, while I'm just sitting on the sidelines. Hell, I don't want to move from the sidelines, damnit!" Want your cake and eat it? Yep, that's me.

"And your devotion to Ivy is in doubt, simply because life does not yet require a sacrifice from you to demonstrate it? That is what I would call fortune, Rache, not cowardice." Angel countered me. "You don't need to pledge yourself to her. Ivy only requires one thing from you now, and that is your love and all it entails. Trust, honesty are the two most important element of any relationship with an undead. Give her those, and believe me, the two of you will have a great many years ahead of you to figure everything else out. A vampire's patience in their second life is eternal, Rachel. She will not seriously begrudge you even a decade of waiting now."

"No one else seems to think so." I scoffed. "I've lost count of how many people expressed their hope I'd take my place at Ivy's side."

"This city is at war." Angel replied calmly. "Of course, they will look for any reassurances they can find."

"Which kinda suggests everyone would be better off if I was Ivy's scion, don't you think?"

"Ivy's followers would surely agree with that statement. She herself might as well. It is true that the two of you would be much stronger bound this way. Ivy would be a better leader for it, and you would become a force of nature. However, this is not something that should be forced, either physically or otherwise. If you are scared, if you have doubts, it is better to simply trust in your feelings for each other to carry you through. Unlike what some may say, a physical bond between you is not necessary, only preferable. You may go through your entire life with her without it, and never be any worse for wear, as long as you remember to be honest and open with her, at all times. Lies and secrets will tear you apart much quicker than remaining unbound ever will."

"I... I guess..." I sighed in frustration, unable to give voice to my doubts and dreads. "I guess my biggest problem is that... I don't have a clue what being a scion really means. I've only seen the really awful side of it. I don't know if there's a better side, or even a worse one... it scares me, but when I stop to think about it, I don't even know for sure it's not something I could learn to want. I... oh... How dumb can I be..." Blame it on the late hour and the long day, but until that moment, it never dawned on me that I was talking to someone who'd been a scion almost as long as the U.S. had been an independent country. "You... You've been around that block, haven't you?" I said. "Could you tell me about it? Why you chose to become Nathalie's scion? How she did it, what it's like?" I asked those questions candidly, but looking at Angel bristling a bit in response, it was clear I'd finally touched a nerve. How fortunate that I hadn't been trying to this time... not.

_Great going Rachel..._ I mentally berated myself. _What, you already forgot those flashes you got from that undead bitch Nathalie?_ I was seriously lacking context for them, but I did recall seeing a younger, teenaged version of Angel narrowly 'rescued' from what sure looked like a sacrificial altar somewhere in there.

"That's an awfully personal question to ask someone you neither like nor trust, Rachel." Angel replied neutrally.

"I... sorry, I didn't mean to pry." I apologised, hoping I hadn't cut myself off from the only non-vamp scion I'd ever met, and just about the only person who could give me the perspective I lacked to start making an enlightened decision about that damn scion issue. I wasn't remotely warming up to the idea yet, but I suppose guilt-tripping will make you at least consider some things.

"The hour is too late for me to go digging those skeletons out of my closet." Angel wearily declared, her hand slowly rising to her chest to pensively wrap around the strange, dark red stone that hung from a silver chain around her neck. "Perhaps later I can indulge your curiosity. For now, I've gone the night without sleep. The lure of a warm bed is rather irresistible."

"I understand." I whispered as I watched her stride by me and back out the door, where she froze in her tracks. "Have a good night, Angel." What? I can be civil too...

"I believe the person you're looking for is somewhere on the south corner of the fourth floor." Angel said over her shoulder. "Good morning, Rachel. And please try to remember what I said. Love and all it entails. Especially honesty." And with that strangely worried parting comment and a brief grimace of pain, the elf turned into a slightly too large, shining black raven right before my astounded eyes. A final croak and a flutter of wings later, she was gone.

_Well, that sure explains why I didn't see her when we rescued Erica..._ I thought, my eyes wide with astonishment. How the heck had she done that? She hadn't used a potion, and if she really didn't deal with demons, that transformation wasn't due to a curse, either.

'_A lot I don't know about you', huh? I'm starting to think that's an understatement._

I stood flabbergasted on the porch for a while, staring at the spot where Angel had vanished, trying to remember why I was walking back in in the first place, only remembering I was looking for Erica to bring her back home. Not only that, but Angel had been kind enough to give me a place to look for her. How nice.

I felt like a burglar in the huge darkened confines of Ivy and Erica's family home, my steps echoing a fair bit in the absolute silence of the huge, deserted house. I was the only one here now, for real, and it caused a spot of nervousness to be sneaking around like that in a vampire's lair. It was a relief to come to the south corner and find only one door slightly ajar, light spilling out in the murky hallway. The door spun quietly inward on well-oiled hinges, revealing a surprising sight within. The room beyond was a parlor or library of some sort, high-ceilinged, its interior wall lined with bookshelves. A lone desk stood on the opposite side, facing another bay window the likes of which I had seen in other rooms of the manor. A bit unexpectedly for a vampire's dwelling, a large skylight dominated the ensemble, providing what I was sure would be perfect, amply sufficient all-natural lighting during the daytime. Several love chairs were tucked in the corners, with a singular couch flanked by two lamps and faced by a low coffee table lining the far walls. On this couch was indeed the person I was looking for, as Angel had put it. Erica was there, curled up almost in a ball like a sleeping kitten. Most surprising, however, was the presence of the woman whose lap my young friend was using as a pillow, a woman whose lips curved into a lazy, seductive smile as soon as her unfathomable brown eyes settled on me.

I'd not only found Erica, but I'd stumbled upon Ivy as well.


	25. Chapter 25

A/N: Wha-a-a-a-at? A _second_ update within a reasonable delay? What is this, I don't even... Check outside your windows for flying pigs, guys! In all seriousness, enjoy. As an anon aptly put it, Ivy's baaaaaack!

* * *

Chapter 25

"Hey, you're here?" I said to the gorgeous vampire as I stepped into the doorway of the study and leaned on its frame, smiling at the heart-warming picture the sisters made. "Where did you come from? I could have sworn you were gone after that scene in the cemetery."

"Hmm, I was." Ivy answered quietly in deference to the sleeping Erica, her fingers combing through her sister's baby soft hair never missing a beat as she reclined in her seat to stretch and stare pensively at the high ceiling. "I got a call to come back before I even got a chance to change, though. Mom had a gr-e-e-e-at sense of timing tonight." She drawled tiredly, but I still felt a little bit of giddiness that she'd called her mother 'Mom' for once, no matter how terrified I was of the woman. "I've been in a meeting with her and dad all night. We just called it quits about a half hour ago."

"I thought she was a bit of an absentee hostess tonight." I remembered; Seth's mom had been the one seeing to everything tonight. Mrs Tamwood had mostly just loaned her the use of her house. "You were with her all this time? What did she want to talk to you about? Kissing and making up?" I dropped wistfully, not really believing it even after Mrs Tamwood threatened to kill me if I hurt her daughter, so I was taken by surprise by Ivy's reply.

"I wouldn't go that far, but... yeah, we all sat down at the proverbial table, actually. I guess between, you, Erica and Dad, Mom and I were bound to get a measure of sense pounded into us. The four of us have been trying to come up with a peace agreement all night."

"Ivy, that's great!" I said enthusiastically, profoundly relieved for both sisters and proud of Ivy for agreeing to sit down and talk, knowing how hard it was for her and her mom to see eye-to-eye.

"Hmm. Don't get too excited just yet. We didn't get very far. Mom's not used to being reasonable where I'm concerned." Ivy chuckled derisively at the ceiling. "What's that they say? The pot's calling the kettle black? Yeah, that's me. I suppose I'm not all that reasonable where she's concerned either. We'll pick it up and try again tomorrow night. I just needed to take a breather before bed... so to speak." She smirked at her own pleasantry, bringing her wineglass to her lips and taking a sip. The bottle, I noticed, was sitting right in front of her, mostly full.

"You planned to drink a whole bottle of wine by yourself?" I asked, a bit discomfited by the news, my eyebrows high; Ivy never drank that much in a month, let alone all at once. It made me wonder how bad the meeting had to have gone for her to need that much alcohol afterwards, never mind that she couldn't technically get drunk anymore. "Your 'breather' looks more like a 'drinker' from where I'm standing." I joked lamely, making Ivy snort.

"God, that's terrible." Ivy groaned and shook her head, prompting me to pull out my tongue at her despite the small smile softening the blow. "_I _didn't plan to drink it, actually. Erica snuck the bottle out of the wine cellar. I caught her just as she popped the cork. It's not that I exactly blame her after watching mom and I butt head for the past four hours, but she's still only turning eighteen next month. So I offered her the alternative to getting drunk that doesn't involve underage drinking or snorting six week's allowance's worth of brimstone." Depending on who you are, that could mean a whole lot of Brimstone or none at all. In Erica's case, it would translate to a trip to the ER for most grown men and a strong buzz for the young woman. Seriously. You need to see her tiny diminutive self wolfing down pancakes to believe her metabolism...

And yes, it is hilarious that just like her dad, Ivy would frown upon underage drinking less than a month away from Erica's eighteenth birthday, but not on Brimstone use. Vampires and their drugs... I don't care what anybody says, they're weird. These particular ones might be ridiculously cute, but they were still weird.

"You got her completely sugared?" I guessed; it was pretty obvious judging by the way Erica was now using her sister's lap as a pillow that she was deeply under the influence of vampire pheromones.

"Com-pletely." Ivy acknowledged with a look at the vampire acting like a big kitten on her lap. Affectionately, the older sister traced the shell of her younger sibling's ear, making her sigh and snuggle closer. "She deserves it, after the week she's had. Are you heading out? Were you looking for her?"

"I was. Wanted to know if she was coming back with me to the church." I said as I pushed away from the door frame, entering the study proper, breathing in the comforting scent of old books and vampire incense. I liked this room a lot, better than any other I'd visited in the sterile, coldly beautiful house, and seeing the sisters in their current position, I had a feeling I had stumbled upon some kind of sanctuary.

"No, I don't think she is." Ivy answered in her sister's stead. "The worst is over now. I think she can handle moving back in here. You can go ahead if you want. We'll arrange for someone to get Erica's stuff back from the church. It's getting late, and God knows it wasn't an easy day for you either."

"Oh, you're right about that, but since you're here, I guess I can hang around for a bit longer. Care for some company?"

"I wouldn't mind yours. As long as you don't mind the pheromone bath, that is." Ivy gave me her trademark arched eyebrow look and gestured for me to come closer with one hand, the other one setting her glass down on the small table close to her and reaching for the bottle. Without ever breaking eye contact with me, she poured another glass.

"_Should I_ mind the pheromone bath?" I asked, feeling a familiar thrill crawl across my skin.

"Only if relaxing and letting go worries you. Or you don't want to stop being afraid and judgmental of me for a while." She tilted her head and smiled sardonically at me, a dangerously sexy vampiric smile that made the pit of my stomach drop in a dizzyingly pleasant way. "It's white. You don't have trouble with white, right?"

"No, I don't." I chewed on my lip for a second before taking the glass from her. "Thanks." I brought the crystal glass to my lip to take a quick sniff of the golden-hued wine, even though I would have been hard pressed to read any information from the scent. I'll be the first to admit I'm an ignoramus when it comes to wine, but I like it a lot, despite the strict limits my intolerance to sulphur put on what I could and couldn't drink. "I'm not really afraid of you anymore, you know." I stated, sitting a comfortable distance away beside her, comfortable only in the sense that she might need a little space, being stressed out and all. I was more than a little tired, and even more envious of Erica's current position, as cute as the two of them were; Ivy was looking cuddlier by the minute, and I wouldn't have minded a little TLC.

"I'm only making sure you know the score. You did accuse me of not playing fair the last time we were alone together..." Ivy reminded me a bit coolly.

"Touché. I wouldn't say I was judgmental today, though." I added mildly, remembering the scene she and her mom made in the cemetery. "You screwed up for a moment back there, Ivy. I think you know it."

"I know." Ivy admitted after a few seconds defiantly holding my gaze, her eyes lowering in shame, her demeanour turning as meek as a creature like her, born and raised to lead and dominate her surroundings, could manage. "I'm sorry. I couldn't keep my instincts in check." Mirthlessly, she chuckled, shaking her head slowly as a sad smile took over her mouth. "You know, I have absolutely no clue how Piscary planned to make things work between us once he killed me. Unless they're living, I can barely stand to be around another vampire anymore. Add to that the bad blood between Mom and me and, well... you were there. Never stood a chance. If it wasn't for you and Erica... no 'if's' or 'maybe's', we would have killed each other then and there." Ivy's regrets looked heart-wrenchingly sincere, probably because they were. Her tight control was always a big concern, and often a bigger issue, for her, and losing it always slugged her in the gut. I doubted death had changed that.

"Hey, don't beat yourself up too bad." I told her softly, reaching for a bang of long raven-wing hair that fell before her face, my finger running gently along her scalp to tuck it behind her ear. "You slipped up, no question there, but you did the right thing in the end. Judging by the way she's acting, I'm guessing Erica forgave you too. Hard to stay mad when the injured party let it slide."

"We had words. She was a little angry with what I had to do since... well, like I said, you were there, you heard her reproaches in the cemetery. She was upset about that too, about what I had... what I thought I had to keep from her."

"I did hear, but I also recall her begging you not to go." I pointed out, gently gripping her shoulder in an offer of support. It was taut and tense, even considering her muscles' preternatural powers. With a sudden surge of inspiration, brought about by her more tame body language, I put down my glass and wiggled part of my body between the vampire and the couch, placing both my hands on her shoulders, firmly squeezing and releasing with a slow, regular rhythm. I knew when Ivy groaned in relief that I had gauged what she needed just fine. Vamp strength muscles right there, and with all that power came a lot of tension whenever their owner was stressed out. She wasn't hard like marble, of course, that would make no sense. It was more like warm, very tough rubber, still flexible but unyielding... not that touching a tire felt anything close to caressing that divine body of hers... you know, I'm just gonna kill that analogy right here before I dig myself deeper. She was stressed, and it felt good to help her relax a bit. There.

"Oh, God, you really are magical..." Ivy quietly breathed out after a few second, before stopping me with a small, apologetic smile, taking my hand to bring it up to her soft cool lips and pressing them lightly to my skin. "I appreciate the thought, but you'll give yourself cramps long before you manage to loosen me up. I need to sleep. I'm way too young to stay awake for a whole month at a time..."

"Aw, you're up past your bedtime, Fang Girl?" I teased her breathily as a shiver ran through me, but turned serious with mild worry as I remembered the importance of her respecting said 'bedtime' if she didn't want to sleep forever. "Speaking of which, shouldn't you be heading home and underground soon?" I asked with a glance at a nearby grandfather clock. Dawn was still some time away, but Ivy would be cutting it pretty close if she didn't get on her way soon. Then again, her lair could be next door for all I knew. That wasn't information she shared with me, and I hadn't thought to ask Erica where Ivy's daylight resting place was.

"I'm staying here today as a show of goodwill." She answered with a shrug. "There's a sun-proof guest room downstairs, so unless the sun catches me between here and there, I'll be fine. If you want to stay, you're welcome to bunk here with me..."

"Tempting..." I quietly swallowed when her sinful smile showed me a peak of pearly white fang, telegraphing exactly what she had in mind by 'bunking'. "That's real tempting, Ivy."

"But?"

"No 'but'. I'm... considering." I replied

"Considering... what?" Ivy's intrigued eyes narrowed a bit.

"Just considering." I replied vaguely, and scooted a little closer into the vampire's space to reassure her I was working on the last physical hang-ups I still had. "Let's enjoy this first, and then we'll see."

Ivy rumbled inarticulately. She looked skeptical, or perhaps she wasn't too happy the prospect of a day with her didn't fill me with a panty-ruining urge to tear our clothes off. Odd, considering I probably smelled and sounded excited enough for her vamp senses to pick up on it. "You know you're ruining a lot of vamp stereotypes by drinking white wine instead of red, right?" I teased to distract her as I curled up on the couch close to her and breathed in deep, taking her wonderful vampire incense within me and feeling a lot of tension pour out of me on my exhale. Oh yeah. Wine and vamp pheromones. Just what the doctor ordered after a day like today. I know, I'd abstained from drinking alcohol all evening long for exactly the same reasons, but a last drink with Ivy? I could make an exception.

"I'll be sure to let Erica know you don't approve of her choice of intoxicant when she wakes up." Ivy replied dryly. "Really, she should be more conscious the next time she's stressed out of her mind. She shouldn't blindly go for the white, but grab the first redhead she can reach..."

If it wasn't for Erica's light snoring, you could have cut the following silence with a knife.

"Huh... Ivy?" _Whoa, Freudian slip much?_ I thought, the tension in my neck and shoulders coming right back, with interest. "Are we still talking about wine here?" I stared uncomfortably at the vampire, suddenly more than a little unsure how much she knew about what I'd let her sister do to me. Instinctively, I hid my wrist against my left thigh, even if I had covered the mark Erica's fangs had left there behind my broad metal bracelet.

"Relax, she spilled the beans to me. Not that she needed to, considering I could feel her bites on you. I figured it out the second I held you in my arms at the funeral home." Ivy said tightly without looking at me, her body language betraying how very uncomfortable she was about the whole subject matter despite her dismissive tone. "I know she's been taking blood from you recently."

_That's it, I'm screwed. She so gonna put me through that window._

"Ivy, I can... It wasn't like... us, you know? I just... she was..." I stammered wildly, going from one excuse and defence to the other without even taking the time to finish one

"Don't. Please, just don't. I can imagine what happened. Under the circumstances, I understand why you did it." Ivy reluctantly muttered, the last addressed to her sister sleeping on her lap as well as me. Slowly, she brought her hand to my neck, her fingers deftly untying the scarf I still wore to hide the bite marks. Without a hitch, the fabric slipped off my neck in a delicate caress that trapped my breath in my lungs. Sorrowfully, my lover brought the scarf to her face and inhaled deeply of my scent clinging to it, before she deftly folded it and handed it back to me. "If you're not ashamed of what happened, don't hide them. It might be misunderstood, and anyone who looks at you can sense them anyway. It makes you look silly, and some people might think you're cheating on me."

_Didn't I screw up like that once already?_ I thought, shivering, when Ivy brushed her thumb against the healing skin, her eyes hooded and haunted, like she was genuinely hurt these weren't her marks.

"I'm not gonna blow a fuse." She added to me, noticing I was now sitting about as far away from her as the couch would allow and she had to stretch her arm to its full length to touch me.

"Could've fooled me." I squeaked, my voice sounding embarrassingly thin and reedy. I'm a big badass runner, yes. Don't I look the part, sitting here, next to my homicidally jealous girlfriend? Or in the company of her mother whose intentions in my regard probably still were just as murderous?

"If you want me to get up and dance for joy about it, you're wasting your time. I'm a big enough girl to let it go and try not to care about it. Leave it at that and _don't_ push your luck, because I swear, Rica's the only one who gets a free pass." Ivy warned me as she topped off her glass and swallowed a healthy gulp of wine. "_Anyone_ else makes a pass at your blood, I'll tell them the joke about the number of vampires needed to paint a wall red."

"I didn't plan on giving my blood to anyone else..." I spoke tentatively once I was convinced Ivy really meant she wouldn't go berserk, but the vampire didn't reply beyond a vague non-committal sound in her throat. She looked as grumpy as could be, and to tell you the truth, I found it utterly adorable. _This is such a bad, bad, _baaaaad_ idea... I love it!_ I thought as a light bulb lit up over my head. "So-o-o, it doesn't bother you?" I gripped my courage and asked after a few seconds of silence, the corner of my mouth lifting in an evil smirk at the bristling look on Ivy's face. The way she shook her head after downing the contents of her glass and reaching for the bottle again made the smirk bloom into a full blown grin. I bet she heartily regretted her species' immunity to intoxicants right this second. Undead vamps can't be poisoned, but the flipside of that coin is that they can't get drunk or high either. Good luck drowning it... "You don't care at all that your sister's been giving me fang all week long?" I needled her. It was poetic justice, really. She'd done so much of that to me in the past week that I felt she had some payback coming her way. Who was I to let such a grand opportunity to annoy her pass by?

"I told you, no." She replied much too quickly to be honest, still not looking at me and still drinking wine at a breakneck pace. Oh yeah, she was _totally_ fine with it... and by that I mean she was turning green, of course.

"I'm just making sure here. That's all." I stated innocently. "So, for the record...?"

"I also told you not to push your luck, witch..." Ivy growled, sucking threateningly on her teeth. "That's _shoving_ it, and then some."

"You're always telling me to be more thorough. I'm being thorough right here, right now. Are you sure? Really sure? Re-e-e-eally sure? Really, really, re-e-e-eally sure?" I ignored her and kept poking over and over in my best obnoxious-cartoon character simile, until Ivy turned to glower at me, hissing low and menacingly like an angry cat. Her very white fangs peeked through her lovely parted lips, the sight of the long and sharp teeth making a flood of danger and adrenaline jolt deliciously through me. Teasing a vampire truly was the ultimate thrill, but I knew that the way Erica was cuddling up to her would keep Ivy right where she was better than any set of restraints.

"Aw, poor puppy. The wicked witch is being so mean to you..." I cooed at my favourite vampire, the chagrined look she put on when she followed my gaze to realise how, with Erica where she was, it was impossible for her to pin me and teach me some respect much too cute for my heart to take. After putting my glass down and getting my knees under me, I scooted closer to her side to stroke her cheek, leaning in close to brush my lips against hers in apology. "There. All better now?"

"First you poke me with a sharp stick, now you're kissing me..." Ivy grumbled grouchily, her jaw barely moving. I could tell she was trying hard not to respond, and so I ran a slow fingertip down her taut neck, just to make it even harder to stay mad at me. "You really are a mean, mean witch." She breathed out in a shudder of pleasure.

"Mmm. I'm a wicked witch, and you know you love it." I moaned quietly when her lips inevitably parted, letting me deepen the kiss and explore the velveteen depths of her mouth. "The poking was my personal payback for, oh let's see... your dressing advice, your constant teasing on the phone, and for making me feel like such a shameless slut last week. You totally deserved it, Fang Girl."

"And the kissing?" She asked warily, probably expecting me to respond like a smartass once more.

"That's because you did good today and you earned it." I answered sultrily, kissing her some more before cheekily adding, "And because it _was_ wicked when you made me feel like a shameless slut last week. Oh, and also, you're my girl, so I can kiss you whenever I damn well feel like it." I finished on a note of possessiveness, moving my hands to her raven-wing locks and entangling them into their heavy lusciousness for extra leverage. I chuckled briefly when she started purring at my attentions. "Mm, I love when you do that." I told her before redoubling my efforts to get her to let me in.

"Mm-hmm. What can I say? Making out with you works for me." She whispered, apparently decided she finally forgave me and let her hair down. Our tongues tangoed deliciously together for a few seconds before I decided she deserved a little something more. Breaking away from hers, my tongue ran over the smooth curve of one of her fangs, making the vampire's eyes flutter close as a shudder of pleasure ran through her. "God, you kiss like a vampire hussy..." Ivy moaned, and I tensed. "I meant that as a compliment to your kissing, Dear Heart. Honest. You're a divine hussy, truly." She added mockingly before I could snap at her.

"Ri-i-ight..." I muttered, still feeling the sting of Ivy's less than dignified 'compliment' anyway. "You mean you like when I do this?" I growled intrepidly, and, determined to show her, let my tongue dart around to trace familiar patterns on Ivy's fangs, patterns that had once driven another vamp lover of mine mad with desire. I wasn't a vampire hussy, but Ivy was right that I knew how to kiss a vamp like a damn good one. Ivy's response to my skilful ministrations was instantaneous. Without any deference to my more fragile frame, her arms wrapped around me to roughly pull our bodies close, the sudden discomfort and the flare of her passion combining to send streaks of molten sensations through my vamp scars, setting them ablaze even without her laying a finger on them. She'd been putting out a great deal of pheromones, so much that the actual skin-to-skin contact wasn't even necessary to fill me with wanton, aching desire for her to give me a wholly different kind of kiss.

"Oh my... Fuck, Ivy!" I swore half deliriously, finding the tables suddenly turned. In a blink, Ivy had taken charge. I was no longer kissing her; she was the one doing all the work now while I hung on for one bumpy ride, the reversal happening so fast it left my head spinning. Her mouth on mine became ravenous and domineering, smothering me to the point I soon began to feel light-headed, but I didn't care at all. I craved everything Ivy Tamwood, and even more, the feel of her fangs breaking my skin, barely caring that she was an undead anymore, and as Ivy pulled away to hypnotically entrap my eyes with hers, I could tell that she absolutely knew it.

"Just a taste, Dear Heart." She murmured seductively, hunger naked and raw in her eyes, burning and pure in its innocence. "Let me have just a tiny taste." She cajoled me, her fingers slowly running from my ear to skim my jaw and trace my jugular, setting off scar after scar with unerring accuracy until I couldn't think of anything at all but her fangs in my throat. I didn't remotely care l about the possible ramifications and consequences of sharing blood with her, I just wanted that impossible ecstasy she could bring, so desperately I could have cried for it. Jerkily, I nodded my consent, letting my eyes flutter close and the last of my clarity slip through my fingers. I was all hers.

Gently Ivy's mouth traced the strong line of my jaw, strangely uninterested by the pulse beating against the skin of my neck inches away. Going completely the other way, she angled her mouth higher for mine, claiming it with a moan of anticipation, her hand slipping behind my head to hold me immobile. Carefully, she captured my lower lip in between her teeth, tugging lightly on it. There was a sliver of pain for a brief second, precisely in the middle of it, starting halfway from my gums and reaching the plump, sensitive part. She had used the sharp tip of her fang to cut my lip open, and it hurt badly for that first moment, but once Ivy sealed her lips around mine, it transmuted into unparalleled bliss in a blink. Pleasure exploded from the small wound, radiating outward and echoing in my other marks, making the following kiss much, much more than meeting lips and twirling tongues. I turned feverish, instinctively clutching Ivy's face so she wouldn't pull away and take the intoxicating feeling with her. I really needn't have bothered; Ivy was suckling me like she was a fat kid and my bloody lip was made out of freaking candy.

(Arguably) unfortunately, the cut was not that deep, and filled with her healing saliva, so it didn't take long for it to stop bleeding. With a growl of displeasure, Ivy released my lower lip, her tongue running greedily more than affectionately down my chin to capture every last trace of blood she could get before planting her gaze firmly into mine. One of her hands was still resting on my collarbone, her long fingers gently threading the sensations she summoned from my scar so it coursed through my entire body, promising to flood me with pleasure my mind could scarcely fathom if I just tilted my head in surrender. The other tangled in my hair, holding me firmly so I couldn't avert my eyes, so I couldn't hide how curious I was if size actually mattered when it came to vamp fangs, and Ivy once again could perfectly tell. She knew I wouldn't protest at all if she took more, that I might actually thank her for it. All she had to do was to lean forward, dip her mouth into the hollow of my neck, let it find my jugular and press her fangs to it, oh so gently-

"Eww. Is that blood? Gross... Would you two get a room? Some of us are trying to sleep." A groggy voice, heavy and slurring with sleep, muttered below us, snapping the thick sexual tension like a twig under an elephant's heels. Ivy gave my dishevelled self a displeased and frustrated look, her lips moving almost soundlessly as she muttered something low and menacing towards the teenager our shenanigans had just woken up.

"Sorry, Rica." Ivy apologised tightly to the grimacing teenager. I would have too, except that I couldn't, seeing as I was too busy blubbering and blushing furiously to follow suit. "We didn't mean to wake you."

"Yech. That doesn't make it better, you horndog. Thanks for the nightmare material. God, I swear I'm never getting that image out of my head." The younger vampire rambled, making me reach for my wineglass so I could hide behind it, and wash down the lingering metallic taste of my own blood with really expensive grape juice; I regretted it pretty quick, since the alcohol stung like hell. What? It sounds weird that she was this grossed out by catching us in the act like that after she and I shared blood? Well, I told you it didn't mean the same thing with either sister. Neither of us was sexually worked up when Erica bit me, so it was akin to a very private hug. On the other hand, what I'd just done with Ivy was _profoundly_ sexual, like letting the undead vampire reach third base. Same bodily fluids, different meaning, just like I said.

"Are you purring? My God, you are... What are you, eight? 'Cause that's about the age I stopped doing that..." Erica almost sounded appalled by the sound coming from Ivy's chest; apparently she didn't think it was as cute as I did when Ivy purred like a big cat. "This is so gross. Do you practice your blowing skills by sucking your thumb too?"

"If you don't like what I'm doing, feel free to stop using me as a pillow, girl. I've got someone else I'd love to give your seat to." Ivy shot back with a side glance at me, not sounding embarrassed in the slightest even though my blush deepened and Erica groaned loudly in disgust. "It's late, and you had a long day. You'd sleep better in your own bed." The older sister added more softly, going all Responsible on the younger vamp. Erica sleepily grumbled something that didn't sound very acknowledging, instead cuddling up closer to her sister, reminding me again of a big kitten curling up on someone's lap to nap, paying no heed to the desires of the owner of said lap. Smiling tightly, her exasperation starting to show, Ivy cajoled her, the young vampire refusing to budge until she broke out the big guns, namely the threat of taking me right there on the couch if she didn't hop into bed and/or leave us alone.

"And where exactly do I fit into that plan, Ivy?" I coughed up at that, my cheeks blazing red from embarrassment.

"I don't know where you fit, but I've got a few ideas where I do..." Ivy replied with a sly wink to me, making me groan and her baby sister gag overly dramatically.

"Grossgrossgrossgrossgross! I love you, V, but you're so gross. Scientifically proven fact. You deserve the Gross award for the grossest gross that ever grossed."

"Proven? But I haven't even begun experimenting yet... Feeling curious, my dearly annoying little sister? I'm sure I can teach you a thing or two about the pleasures of Sapphic love." Ivy asked her sister sweetly, her trademark arched eyebrow look daring Erica to call her in on it. "Bedtime, now."

"I was here fi-i-rst! Besides, I don't feel like walki-i-ing." Erica whined, her obvious sass getting turned on its head when Ivy, in one fell swoop, scooped her up in her arms and tossed her over her shoulder like she weighed as much as an empty pillowcase.

"Try and hold that thought, I'll be right back." My lover told me in a soft and hopeful grey voice, not even blinking that her little sister was pounding her back, outraged at getting treated like a potato sack. "I just have to get rid of this nuisance. There's a big trash can down in the kitchen. Won't be but a minute."

"Hey! You promised! You promised never to do that again!" Erica yelled.

"Try and stop me, little girl. You want gross, I'll give you _really_ gross..."

The vamp sisters' voices blended into one and faded away as Ivy dragged Erica away into the hallway, though I was fairly certain she wouldn't dump anyone in the garbage. Alone pretty much for the first time tonight, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling the blush on my warm cheeks recede. Self-consciously, I wiped my slightly swollen lip with the tip of my fingers, a mild frown scrunching up my eyebrows when they came away red with a thin sheen of blood I thoughtfully smeared against my thumb before sucking away. That... that had been entirely too close, too fast. Sharing blood with Ivy, even if it was only a tiny drop of it, had been positively orgasmic, but I knew I wasn't ready for it yet. I was glad the vampire had been a gentleman and only taken a tiny amount from me, though, and the fact she had started by taking a lick of frosting rather than eating the whole cake like she could have gave me a measure of comfort. She was certainly nudging me more insistently now that she used to when she first started hunting me, but she refrained from pushing too hard, and I appreciated she was going along with my uncharacteristic "take it slow" approach to the two of us, even if she wouldn't let me forget she wanted everything a sex life with a vampire should entail.

_Huh... she cut me right on that other scar._ I realised as I ran my tongue inside my lip, over the inside of the tiny cut, tasting a hint of redwood and copper. The mark Kisten and Seth's killer had left on my lower lip had been very neatly covered by a new, much more tolerable one. It was probably a possessive gesture on her part, but I still smiled a bit, unexpectedly relieved she had claimed a mark of violation and changed it into one that could eventually mean as much to me as the one she had left on my neck during her last day alive.

* * *

It took an unexpectedly long time for Ivy to come back, so long in fact that I began to wonder whether I should get up and go look for her by the time she finally showed back up, a pleasantly exasperated look on her face.

"She will never know how close she came to getting tossed in the trash..." Ivy sighed as she walked in, her eyes brightening as she got me back in her sight. "Or how happy I am she can annoy me enough to consider dumping her in there again."

"You really did that once?" I asked, giving her a semi-reproachful look. Despite myself, I did find their sisterly antics kinda funny.

"Don't give me that look. It wasn't a spur of the moment thing, it was a carefully planned revenge. It's not like I tossed her down a garbage chute, and I made sure there was something soft enough to pad her in first. I'm not sure she saw it as a real kindness, though. I still remember the smell. God, mom wanted my ass on a plate when we fished her out. It would have been interesting to see if she still fits, though. I think she really was five the last time." She added with a nostalgic smile.

"Oh, God, and here I thought Robbie and I were bad..." I chuckled quietly. "The two of you are terrible."

"I know. What can I say, I didn't take kindly to my lipstick being used as crayons back in those days."

"As opposed to now? Are you going to toss me headfirst in the nearest trash container if I use your makeup to draw?"

"It's all a matter of context. If you absolutely need it to, I don't know, lay down a circle to save our hides, of course I won't mind. If you use my lipstick eleven times in a row, to draw stick figures on the back of a cereal box like she did, though, I think I'll have other things on my mind than throwing you in the trash... like backing out of the room slowly." She smirked at me and sashayed closer, but as the space between us lessened so did the swaying of her perfect hips and the intensity of her sexual aura. She was cool as a cucumber by the time she sat down next to me, at the other end of the couch, her efforts to keep space between us and keep her hands (and fangs) to herself obvious. Her eyes were still roaming my body, though, and her eyes showed enough black to betray how ravenous what she saw made her. Swell...

"You didn't hold the thought, did you?" She framed it as a question, but it was really more of an observation.

"No, I didn't." I confirmed apologetically after a moment of chewing my lip. "It's not that I'm blaming you our anything because I pretty much asked for it, but... I wasn't really ready to go there, Ivy. Not yet."

"I figured as much." She sighed, looking a little disappointed about it as she reached for the wine to console herself. "Well, the little taste was fun at least. It would be wiser if I kept a little distance for now, though." She added when I reached for her to stroke her back.

"I didn't want to lead you on like that. And yes, it was." I grinned wickedly, because I it had been and she deserved to know I enjoyed it. My answer to her offer of a blood tryst was 'not yet', and I meant 'not yet', not 'never in a million years'. If things between us kept progressing, I knew sooner or later Ivy would get to taste my blood again. "I still don't see why it should mean you have to stay all the way over there, you know." I invited her, crooking my finger at her with obvious enticement. Perking up, the vampire shimmied over to my side of the large couch, looking like sex personified even if she moved like some kind of invertebrate, and straddled my lap with boneless grace, her long legs settling on either side of me and her arms slinking around my neck. I inhaled sharply at my new helplessness, but the feeling of unease was mixed with more than a little excitement. Okay, so I was used to being the one doing what she was doing, and from this angle Ivy didn't exactly look harmless, but the very nice view of her cleavage and the way her whole body was within easy reach convinced me I should try and work the position.

"You want to 'keep me company' some more, don't you?" Ivy tilted her head curiously and asked in a smouldering tone, her eyes going black and smoky. Feeling smarmy, I thoughtfully lifted my gaze to the ceiling, as if I had to ponder my answer, smirking mischievously.

"Bah, not you in particular. I'll be happy with just your mouth, actually." I sassed her, grinning from ear to ear when a cute pout bent her lips, making her plump lower one look eminently kissable.

"I'm afraid they only come in a package deal, Dear Heart." Ivy pulled back when I tried to go for her scrumptious mouth again, keeping it ju-u-ust out of my reach. "You need to buy the whole thing."

"Aw, you mean I absolutely _have_ to get this too?" I clucked my tongue and asked, putting my arms around her and taking her godly butt in hand. Firmly, I kneaded it through her soft dress pants, then trailed my fingers upward over her sides, until my hands were on her ribcage and I could brush my thumbs against the underside of her breast, making the vampire hiss in pleasure all throughout. "And this? What a bummer." I nuzzled her cleavage and sighed dramatically, moving one hand a little higher and to the side, to trace the contour of her small, perfectly shaped boob. "Okay, then. I think I can work this, if I _really_ have to." I sighed dramatically. Keeping the farce going was getting more difficult by the second (_godly_ butt and chest, I tell you), especially with the vampire's face so close to mine, her every reaction so raw and clear it almost felt like I was touching myself. Unable to resist, I squarely palmed the sinful weight of her breast and fervently captured her lips, kissing my favourite vampire deeply, wisely keeping my tongue away from her fangs this time around. I was not getting entangled that way again tonight, but that precaution didn't stop me from singing "Rachel and Ivy sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G" in my head with goofy giddiness, a mood my gorgeous vamp hottie quickly picked up on.

"I'm glad you're looking so much better, let me tell you." Ivy purred in my ear during the brief pause she granted me between two kisses to gulp in some much needed air. "As fun as it was to play doctor with you, I like you a lot better healthy and naughty. Sick and depressed was not a good look for you."

"I'm not, most of the time." I panted in reply, smiling wryly as the vampire's suckling lips delightfully sealed around my earlobe. "Give the sun a few hours to rise, though, and you'll feel like you're making out with roadkill again."

"I never... What?" Ivy frowned in concern at my self-derisive joke, the grip of her hands framing my face becoming firmer and gently pulling me away so she could take a closer look at me. "What do you mean?"

_Shit, I forgot poor health turns her off... _I mentally kicked myself at the sight of the thickening rim of brown surrounding her fiery black pupils, a small part of me unable to believe we'd reached a point where that was a phenomenon I'd be unhappy to see.

"I'm not even sure, to tell you the truth. Ever since... that day..." I paused with a shudder, remembering the fateful night Ivy died and Nathalie bit me, my body rebelling against the memory of the vampire's venom flooding my veins, of my every sensations becoming one of torturous agony, my every emotions turning into despair so deep even death would offer no refuge from it...

"Sorry. It's nothing, I shouldn't have mentioned it." I apologised as I shuddered hard and snapped out of it. The moment had passed, but it was too late. The naughty mood had broken just as surely as when Erica woke up. Ivy's look of concern deepened as she dismounted me, and a little bird told me I wouldn't get to keep her mouth company again, if at all, until I gave mother hen the rundown of my condition. "I've been getting sick in the morning ever since Nathalie bit me." I admitted, grumpily letting go of her, the cut on my pouting lips pulsing mildly painfully in protest at being separated from Ivy's.

"How sick?" Ivy inquired in a voice that suffered no question, her eyes focused so sharply on me it felt like she was using her gaze like a scalpel to dissect me. "Your body temperature's normal, your heart and breathing sound fine, your blood tastes the same as I remember and I can't smell anything off about you. I don't understand. What's wrong, what are your symptoms?"

"Nausea, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, soreness. I need shades whenever I go outside during the day, too, or my eyes water too much to let me see anything." I enumerated them dully, staring into my wineglass. I had pushed them out of my mind while we were making out, and in the wake of that lovely experience, being reminded of what would hail my body in a few short hours was doubly unpleasant. "Feels like the flu, I'd say, just with a day-night cycle that turns it on and off. It's peachy, I tell you, but I doubt it'll kill me. There. Can you get back here now?" I finished dismissively in a single, hurried breath, took a small gulp of wine and turned my body back towards the vampire while fidgeting with the high collar of my shirt, hopefully sending the clear message I wanted to go back to our earlier activities rather than dwell on my strange affliction.

"So it's actual daylight that's causing the problem? No symptoms during the night?" Ivy reasoned, not taking the hint I wanted her mouth back on mine, not moving wordlessly as she ran down hypothesises in her head. "Huh."

"'Huh', what? Does that sound familiar?" I asked. Somehow I got the feeling she'd done more than just rule out afternoon sickness as a possible cause of my mysterious ailments, as much of a relief as it was to know I wasn't pregnant with Marshall's baby. He was the last guy I had sex with after all, but I could've told you that wasn't the case myself. I'd worn a contraception amulet that night, along with other protections. I'm ditzy, and I'll be the first to admit it, but not when it comes to _that_ aspect of safe sex. My sex life will leave me bleeding out on the floor or extra-crispy from a surge of ley line energy _long_ before it knocks me up, and now that I think about it, that's a blessing in disguise. I mean, God help the child stuck with me as a mom...

"It might if you could... No. You can't be..." Ivy muttered, obviously confused by whatever new idea had cropped up in her usually incredible mind.

"What's impossible?" I pressed her worriedly, the air on her face making me uneasy. Ivy was the vampire, and a vamp had afflicted me with... whatever this was; she had some clue what was wrong with me, and it freaked her out, despite her usual placid demeanour.

"Well, off the top of my head, there's something other than the flu those are symptoms of. It would beg the question how you could be suffering from light sickness, though."

"Light sickness?" I exclaimed in a strangled voice. "But that..."

"Only affects undead vampires?" Ivy completed for me. "I know. It's undeniable how well it fits, though."

"No way! I mean, don't you think I'd notice if I suddenly turned into a vamp? I'm a witch... well, mostly a witch, anyway... That's not even possible!" I blurted out, the ludicrous idea that my strange affliction was the same that affected vampires suffering from less-than-lethal exposure to sunlight stealing away what eloquence I had.

"That's what baffles me. If witches could be turned vampire, well you wouldn't have needed Nathalie's intervention. I would have been teaching you to drink blood a few days after your demon attacked you two years ago." I must admit that the way she said that mildly crept me out, and not strictly because I really didn't want to be a vampire; under the concern and puzzlement, I could tell that the thought of little old me as her personal lily-white red-headed blood-drinker shall we say, _intrigued_ Ivy.

"Not to mention that if that if you truly suffered from light sickness, unless you slept in my room for the past weeks, it would have been fatal rather than unpleasant. Your flimsy little curtains wouldn't block out enough sunlight to let you survive the day..." The vampire thought out loud.

"So you have no idea how that's possible?" I asked, completely dismayed. "But... you're the vamp. You gotta have some clue. I mean, don't you have all the same parts as Nathalie?"

"Not really. Rachel, you have to understand how different Nathalie is from most vampires out there. The woman is in a league of her own. Her master was created by one of the last Firstborns. In case you don't know, they're the monstrous original vampires everyone who knows of their existence pray went extinct long ago. There may be a few of us more ancient than she is, but out of all vampires living in the open, she's the closest to them, only two steps removed from those monsters. She gave me a nice boost when she helped me cross over, but I'm nowhere near as strong as she is."

"Crap on toast..." I muttered, staring into my wineglass and cursing the impending drive home. Don't drink and drive, kids... only I sure felt like drowning my worries all of a sudden. Crippling diseases and I have a history, a none too pleasant one at that. Light sickness could quickly turn debilitating.

"I know someone who might be able to help." Ivy offered with an appeasing brush of the back of her hand against my cheek. "Someone who's been with Nathalie long enough to make sense of what she did to you."

"You mean Angel?" It didn't take me long to figure out whom she meant, but I clearly surprised her by saying the elven scion's name. "I know Nathalie loaned her to you."

"Ah. So you've met my new magical friend. That sneaky little elf..." Ivy said, referring to that locator charm that allowed her to track down Erica. I knew she hadn't gone to someone reputable for that grey charm... but it was the fondness she displayed that made my eyebrows scrunch up. "What? Can you blame me for taking advantage of such a gift? She helped me gain a lot of ground, and to do so much more smoothly than I would have managed otherwise." Ivy defended herself, (perhaps wilfully) mistaking the reason why I was looking at her sideways.

"You sound... fond of her." I asked, my voice nearly a growl. Angel was gorgeous, powerful and had centuries of experience on me, no doubt with both genders (what, you don't think a few hundred years is a long time to grow curious?). Maybe I was jumping to conclusions, but half the time I had no clue why Ivy lusted after me so; I sure as hell didn't need that kind of competition.

"Well, a beautiful elf with a list of deadly skills longer than your arm and a willingness to do _whatever_ I ask of her without question... why wouldn't I be fond of her?" _Okay, she has to be leading me on. Not even I'm that oblivious..._ I thought as I nearly started foaming at the mouth from her admiring observations and that airy question.

"Aww, that's so sweet. Are you jealous by any chance, Dear Heart?" She asked me, her voice all petulance and sugary sweetness. My scowl deepened and I grunted something inarticulate but somewhat affirmative in response, which made the vampire giggle and reach for me despite the impersonation of a rabid dog whose favourite bones got stolen I was pulling. "So very poetic, that you're the one getting worked up over someone looking at me for once... Oh, Rachel, there's no need for that. I didn't sleep with Angel, I never even gave the idea serious thought. You know I only have eyes for you, my lovely little witch. At any rate..." she continued good-naturedly while I slouched away from an attempted kiss. I kept trying to pout but I was unable to stop my lips from quirking a bit at the tender attraction in Ivy's eyes, which she had no qualm backing up with a pacifying hand on my knee despite my averting the kiss, inching it up just enough towards my thigh to make my heart rate pick up. "I'm hoping she can tell us more about Nathalie's abilities, and the effects of that venom of hers. If she can provide you with treatment, I'll have her tell me what's needed, and you'll be fine."

"With my luck, I've got some kind of vampire cancer no one's ever even heard of." I scoffed. "I'm so screwed, aren't I? I'm going to spend the rest of my life pale as white linen because I want to puke my guts out whenever it's sunny out. Huh, n-no offense, I gu-guess you're even more diurnally challenged than I am nowadays... please stop looking at me like that." The vampire's mood flipped right on its head. Glowering, she gave me a dark look and a slight bemused smile that made me shiver. Sheepishly, I righted myself to plant a little apologetic kiss on the barely quirked corner of her mouth. "Sorry." I mouthed almost wordlessly, yelping when Ivy's hand snaked around to the back of my neck and crushed my mouth back to hers for a hungrier and _much_ deeper kiss. I melted into her, happily letting the peeved vamp take the slight out of my hide, at least until I gasped in surprise when her hand none too delicately found its way beneath my shirt.

"What are you- whoa!" I protested breathlessly and clutched at her cool exploring hand through the fabric of my clothes, purely out of reflex and embarrassment because even though it was a bit rough, her sudden assertiveness turned me on. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Cool off there! Not that this isn't sorta nice, but what do you think you're doing? I don't mind if you look, but I don't remember saying you could touch."

"It's the rule, honey." Ivy purred at me, for now indulging my meagre defence. We both knew what would happen if she wanted that boob-grab bad enough. "You burn me about my intolerance to sunlight, I get to touch your breasts." I almost snorted at the silliness of that statement, but the dead seriousness with which Ivy said it gave me pause. Her hair wasn't the only thing she could grow fast; her perfectly manicured fingernails were now wickedly long and sharp, and if she took offence, well, I doubted she would hesitate to use them on those pink little buds they were closing in on...

"I don't remember agreeing to that particular rule. When did that come to pass? I think I missed the meeting." I played along, partly because of that, partly because very few things that resulted in Ivy touching me were bad in my book.

"It's been in effect ever since we started sleeping together and you've decided to be tactless. I do happen to miss the sun, you know." She stated, not sounding all that hurt to tell you the truth. Impatiently, the vampire wiggled her hand in my grasp, forcing me to tighten it to keep her from proceeding further.

"And what about the flipside of that arrangement? Under which circumstances do I get to cop a feel, worry free?"

"If I ever happen to be tactless about your demon heritage, of course." Ivy responded like that was the most obvious thing in the world. "You can feel free to grope me wherever you want, if I ever burn you about children or demon smut."

"So basically never?" I panted whiningly, Ivy having decided she wanted to enforce her silly rule _now_. Her hand slipped beneath my bra, covering one of my small, unimpressive breasts and giving it a nice, firm squeeze. "Like you'd ever slip up about that..."

"Your problem, not mine." Ivy shot back before roughly shifting our bodies to the side and trapping me between her and the back of the couch. "Now be pretty, be quiet and let me get my reparations."

"That was so demean- ah!" I gasped, instantly forgetting to be offended when she gave my stiffening nipple a hard tweak with the nail of her thumb.

"Pretty and quiet." She admonished me strictly. "You're only doing one of those right."

"Would it kill you to pay me a compliment that's not freaking backw-OW!" I asked rhetorically, only for Ivy to respond with another hard tweak. "Goddamnit, Ivy, those are _attached_! If they're starting to peel off, you're doing it wrong! Watch it or let go!" I warned her and instantly Ivy's rough insistence died down... or rather, she focused it elsewhere, her thumb twirling on the stiff peak of my breast becoming smooth and at least careful enough to make my head spin. Forcefully, the vampire pressed her lips to mine to swallow my pleasured cry, and swung one of her legs over mine, pressing herself closer to leave me nowhere to pull away... not that I'm sure I would have if I could. All of a sudden, I wasn't sure just how far Ivy was intending to go, but part of me sure felt curious to find out since it was clearly my body she was zeroing in on, and not the blood in my veins. My skirt was hiked up so high I was pretty sure the rational part of my brain would die of embarrassment if someone walked in on us now...

_Crap, where does she think she's going with that leg?_ I thought deliriously as it slipped between both of mine, nearing very sensitive parts of my anatomy. I have to admit I liked the idea, but if we were going there, I wanted a door that locked and a real bed, at the very least. Couches are great in a pinch, but having sex on them twice in a row was getting ridiculous.

"Maybe we should follow Erica's suggestion and take this to your room?" I managed to pull my mouth away long enough to suggest breathlessly, quivering for mutual nakedness, to feel the vampire's heavenly skin on mine again. I yearned for her mouth to have more to explore than my face and the patch of skin she could reach on my neck, for her fingers to touch me directly, not through the material of my shirt. I wanted... I needed to have her again (well, maybe 'be had by her' would be more accurate), now, today, and I didn't care if we did it in her parents' house. They'd sure given me a show earlier, and besides, vamps are supposed to be open about sexuality, yes? We were just going to be VERY open, is all.

"So you do want to spend the day, Dear Heart?" Ivy thoughtfully ran a long tapered finger down the bridge of my nose, over my kiss-swollen lips and my chin then back up along the line of my jaw to the back of my ear. Using her fingernail she then traced a delicious path to my collarbone over the side of my neck that was free of vamp scars, murmuring with sultry curiosity. "Are you sure that's wise?"

_Seeing as I'll probably give myself carpal tunnel syndrome if I have to sleep alone, I'd say so, yeah..._ I could only think it, having no breath to spare for the sardonic reply; my actual reply was a jerky, ridiculously eager nod.

"All day, all alone with me, naked, locked in a dark room, at my complete mercy? Or lack thereof." Ivy kept breathing in my ear, her hand on me stilling to let my complete focus go to the sensual grey silk of her voice, overflowing with vampy aural tricks that nearly made my eyes roll back into my head. God, I have no idea if it's possible to talk someone into an orgasm, but Ivy sure was coming close... no pun intended. "You're not a little worried I'll try to sneak a taste? That I'll wake up at sunset feeling peckish and see you lying there next to me, warm, relaxed, sated, deliciously... defenceless?" She moaned the last of her words before taking my earlobe between the tip of her upper and lower fangs, giving it the gentlest of nips while I trembled, lost in lust that made all rational thoughts impossible. She could have described the manner in which she planned to disembowel a hundred newborn kittens in all the gory details with that voice, and I still would have moaned and writhed for more beneath her.

"Yes... no... what was the question again?" I panted, lost and pleasantly dizzied in a haze of desire and vampire pheromones, only vaguely aware that what she was saying should have at least given me a second's pause. It didn't, not really.

"Nothing. Nothing at all." Ivy chuckled, mocking my state and obviously pleased with herself she could get me this worked up with nothing but her voice and a teensy bit of touching. "Shall we retire for the day, then?" She asked as she got off me and the couch, her hand offered.

"You were just trying to get off on my fear again, right?" I asked as, with a little distance between us, I was able to think somewhat clearly again (and get my skirt back down to a height that didn't flash my panties to the whole wide world). Her hand felt warm and dry as it enveloped mine. Ivy gently tugged me close, one of her arm coming around my waist, the other lifting my wrist that wasn't covered by my metal bracelet to her mouth so she could plant a little kiss on it. Never letting go of it, she made twirl around like we were dancing, letting it slip away from her grasp as I exited the spin with a little giggle.

"You would make a lovely breakfast in bed." Ivy studiously arched a brow and answered cryptically, leaving it at that.

"Oh, that's nice... In your dreams, Tamwood."

"That goes without saying, doesn't it? You've starred in the nicest of my dreams for longer than you know." She replied as she turned around to sashay out of the room, her tone stoking the fire she had started in the pit of my stomach. I was still throbbing for her touch, though, so I let the vamp's idea of a pleasantry slide and followed her downstairs to the basement (the actual one, not her mom's lair, thank goodness), my eyes bolted to her seductively swaying hips. Mr Randall and Mrs Tamwood had already retired for the day, and Erica was fast asleep in her second floor bedroom, so the house was still and quiet, lit for the most part only with what little light could make it from the street through the windows. My steps sounded loud as we made our way to a door in the kitchen that led to Mrs Tamwood's lair and the estate's undead living quarters, the basement lacking that raw and unfinished quality most would associate with a traditional basement. Instead, everything was done in the same style as the rest of the mansion, the same polished woods, the same brass doorknobs and the same colours and tones adorned the walls. There was secondary living space living space down here, kind of a complete apartment minus the kitchen, really. Several couches surrounded a colossal TV plugged with a state-of-the-art sound system. Several doors connected this space with other side rooms, one of which I suspected was a bathroom, if the whiff of soap and other beauty product I caught was any indication. It was a lot nicer than any apartment I'd ever rented, that's for sure, but honestly, I was too focused on the vampire before me to really care about my surroundings.

"Through here." Ivy directed me to one door in particular she held open for me, a beautiful one made of massive tooled wood and adorned with a shiny brass handle. With one deep, steadying breath and a tip of my head at her gentlemanly gesture, I walked into our room.

* * *

A/N: Yep, I'm being a jerk and ending it here. As I'm sure you're aware, there's a bit of an inquisition going on in , with admins hunting down and poofing fics that don't correspond to their rating guidelines. Since you've just read this chapter, you can most likely guess the next one will most definitely NOT respect those guidelines. Since I don't want to provoke them until this insanity blows over, I won't be posting it here, but only at my LJ account where I at least enjoy the full measure of my creative freedom. Don't worry, however; I will post an update on to give you a heads-up once it's done, including a link so you can easily find it. I still reply to everyone who comments, so don't worry if you don't have an account, I'll get back to you as usual, even if you leave an anonymous message.


	26. Chapter 26

A/N: Sooooo... remember my plan to avoid provoking the admins by not posting this chapter with explicit content? Instead I was going to post a link to my LJ account and let you guys read there? Fucking fell through. I don't know how to circumvent their spam protection. So I'm going to take my chances with a very graphic chapter. Enjoy, and just hope this story doesn't vanish into a black hole somehow, I guess. Or pray exactly for that if you hate it.

If anyone's looking for me, I'll be somewhere far away, fuming against computers and fucking censorship.

Chapter 26

The room beyond was comfortable, if a bit nondescript; a dresser, two bedside tables on either side of the king-sized bed, a large mirror, a closet and a love chair with another reading lamp in the corner. A large painting of a snow covered winter landscape hung on the wall. A plush cream coloured carpet covered the floor, matching the thick coverlet, the lampshades and the light woods of the furniture. The air smelled a bit cloistered and artificial, which was to be expected considering not a breath of fresh air could make it down here underground without help, but other than that, it was as perfectly acceptable a guest bedroom as the rest of the Tamwood-Randall estate suggested.

"Not bad." I said as I glanced around. The door behind me shut with a faint click that made me swallow softly with nervous excitement and anticipation, the sound announcing Ivy and I finally had some real privacy. On purpose Ivy made a soft shuffling sound as she drew near, exacerbating the feeling and drawing it out until I could feel her at my back and I was jittery with anticipation and longing. The vampire's strong arms snaked around my waist, tenderly pulling me close so that her body and mine moulded together, her chin resting on my shoulder and her long, sighing exhale tickling my cheek. I relaxed into her touch, letting my eyes flutter close in content at the way our bodies fit so well together for a second before we started getting sweaty.

"Hmm, I know how to make it better." Ivy breathed in my ear before gently kissing my jaw.

"How?" I asked as I moved into her touch, her lips and naughty tone making me shiver.

"Well, I was thinking it would look lovely with your clothes scattered all over. Don't you agree?"

"Mm, it's an idea, but if I can suggest a little alteration to that plan, I think it would look _even better_ with your clothes all over as well." I suggested saucily.

"You're right. Oh, how I love the way you think, Dear Heart." Ivy chuckled, her nimble fingers taking the first steps in our home makeover plan on the buckle of my belt. I whirled around as the leather band slipped from its hoops around my waist, my hands going straight for Ivy's hair, tugging her close to kiss her deeply while she worked skilfully at removing my dark skirt. One after the other, every article of clothing I wore was strewn about the room, until I was left in nothing but my underwear. I even stepped out of my shoes, leaving our height difference even greater than before and Ivy looking just a little bit daunting as she hungrily loomed over me. It came with the territory, what with her being an immortal predator of the night, and I couldn't honestly say I wasn't turned on as well.

"There's no need for that, is there?" She murmured in a husky voice that would have, once upon a time, had me carefully withdraw from the room in a minor fit of panic. Undeterred by the hint of intimidation, the vampire crowded closer to me, pushing me back until the back of my legs hit the edge of the bed. In a blink, I found myself staring at the ceiling rather than her naughty black eyes, Ivy having shoved me onto the bed. A little stunned, I propped myself up on my elbows and brought her back in my field of vision, my jaw dropping at the sight of her. With seductive slowness, the vampire was swaying her body from side to side, her long nimble finger deftly working the buttons of her shirt to teasingly reveal the snowiness of her humbly sized but perfectly shaped breasts, the sheer, lacy bra that contained them, and as her fingers moved lower, the drop of blood of her ruby piercing caught in her navel and the tautness of her lean stomach. The last button popped and the shirt fell completely open, aided by her fingers trailing back up to part it further, brushing against smooth skin and the soft swell of her breasts up to her neck. The motion led my eyes right back to hers, her sparkling, lustful obsidian orbs capturing mine, even more captivating that the perfect body she was sensuously exhibiting for me. A whisper of breath escaped her lips, and even though she was probably too far for the sensation to have anything to do with displaced air, I felt it dance upon my skin along my collarbone and twirl about my neck like the softest silk ribbon. I shuddered once, hard, and promptly decided I didn't want to wait for Ivy to take off what little clothes I had left on herself. Once she was done with the lovely show she was putting on, I wanted us straight to business.

Seeing me fumble clumsily with my bra and slip my panties down my legs, Ivy smirked like the cat that ate the canary, the sight of me naked (and almost ready to start without her; just saying, patience never was my strong suit) not making her speed up at all. With a dancer's grace she spun around, showing me her back as she slipped her shirt leisurely off her shoulders, undulating her hips hypnotically from side to side while it fell down her arms and slid to the floor. Deftly, she undid her own belt buckle and took off the length of leather, improvising a prop for her little show, holding behind her back and using it to make her lean, feline musculature play fetchingly for my devouring eyes' benefit before cracking it like a whip and discarding it to the side. I yelped in surprise, and glowered at her a little, but in her state of increasing undress I found it impossible to hold on to what little ire I could muster, which only fed the vampire's already inflated ego. Teasingly, she hooked her thumbs into the waist of her dress pants, hinting at unbuttoning them before using them to enticingly trace the contours of her hips with a sly wink at me. Three times it looked like she would let me see if she wore the panties that matched this lovely bra, each time eliciting a louder groan from me until she finally popped that damn button. The silk fell from the pronounced and shapely curves of her hips like water to gather around her ankles, loose enough that she didn't need to take off her high heels to step out of them.

"Better close your mouth before you drool all over yourself." Ivy mocked me with a fond, smouldering smile, startling me. In my eagerness to ogle every inch of her, I'd done another impersonation of Rachel the horny goldfish. "I want you all wet, but not like that."

"Well, I think that's one accomplished goal." I muttered embarrassedly as I wiped my mouth, just in case, blushing a bit at my body's wanton reaction. "How about you get over here now?"

Looking impossibly smug and self-satisfied, the vampire shook her head in response, the motion swishing her long black hair to the front of her body, covering much of her lovely chest from view, to my chagrin. Again, she whirled around to show me her back as she took off her bra. Holding it to the side to show me her upper half was now completely exposed, she flicked it away and came full circle, using one of her arms to hide her breasts from view, the hand of the other running down the muscles of her stomach, drawing my eyes to the slip of lace that covered the most intimate part of her. She naughtily chewed on her lower lip as she hooked her index on the thin strip of fabric holding her panties in place, feigning to debate whether or not to remove them. I growled impatiently in response, but my eyes were riveted to her fingers, following their most minute motion, only leaving them when she pulled the panties far enough away to show me a hint of her impeccably trimmed pubes. Inch by tantalising inch she pushed the last piece of clothing she had on down her endless legs, her creamy thighs, her shapely calves and finally to her lovely feet still propped up on stylish black back torture implements. Gracefully, Ivy freed one of her legs from the tiny garment, but before I could rejoice at the impending sex, she kicked her panties straight in my face with unerring accuracy, in a feisty display of her vampire abilities. I gave a startled gasp as I pulled the lace from my face and found a hungry vampire, with an equally hungry look in her black eyes staring at mine inches away. Reflexively I shimmied away, to Ivy's obvious delight. The vampire gave me chase, very closely, crawling half over me on all four until my back hit the headboard. As soon as she had me cornered, she was straddling my legs, her arms trapping me; her lips were on mine in less than a second, swallowing my surprised cry as well as my following moans of satisfaction.

_She's just lusting after you._ I reminded myself as Ivy didn't go for my jugular. _It's eagerness, not bloodlust._ My worry died down as the seconds of kissing gave way to minutes, her mouth firm and soft upon mine, her tongue dancing with mine while her fangs were denied any action. Her hands held me close while my own began their long awaited exploration of the soft expanse of skin of her back and the luscious heaviness of her hair. It was a perfect start to what I was sure would be a memorable night... right up until Ivy decided to nuzzle my throat. Her initial eagerness died down into uncertainty and hesitation, despite a sound of approval from me born from the feel of her lips on the thin, sensitive skin there, the vampire going still and inhaling my scent deeply before doing the last thing I expected.

After a second holding in her breath, Ivy abruptly let out a short chortle of laughter. She let her forehead rest against my shoulder for a short while before rocking both our bodies down to the bedspread, manoeuvring to place herself at my back, her figure moulding itself against my every curve in a very, hum... post-coital manner, as if all of a sudden we'd had our fill and she wanted to contently hold me while we drifted to sleep.

"Huh, Ivy, I hate to ask again, but what do you think you're doing?" I asked the vampire now spooning me out of the blue, wondering where the sexily dominating woman had disappeared to. Despite the clamouring of my lady bits for her attentions, she wasn't doing anything at all. "I know I'm getting more flexible when it comes to bumping uglies, but I'm not going to move on that one. Cuddling comes _after_ sex. Not _before_. This really doesn't work for me." I spelled it out, shifting a bit uncomfortably in hopes of alleviating the pulsing ache within my core.

Once more, Ivy chuckled, her face burying in my hair and her chest vibrating against my back. She wouldn't let me move, damn her, and her position gave me a very good feel of her succulent breasts that I desperately wanted to fondle and pinch and cup and -blargh!

"Sorry, Dear Heart." Ivy apologised, apparently finding _something_ very funny because she was still chuckling, even though we were pressed naked together and I was all hot and bothered and so very willing to let her have her way with me... and she preferred to laugh about it rather than ravish me. "We have a small unforeseen problem. Stop wiggling." She ordered and locked a solid steel leg around both of mine when I tried to grind my ass against her, hoping to make her move already. "I'm afraid I won't be getting it up anytime tonight, so to speak. It's not your fault." She hurriedly added before my insecurities, brought about by her recent striptease, could make me say one self-derogatory word. "You're as gorgeous as ever, but..."

"But what?" I asked curtly. If her tone had been different, I might have been worried, but I was in sexual limbo, and I wasn't in on the joke that made her laugh her ass off at my back, and possibly my expense. It made me a little bitchy.

"But it doesn't change the fact you smell like Erica. You're positively covered in her scent. It wasn't all that noticeable when you were wearing clothes soaked in my old scent, but now, it's making things difficult, to say the least."

"What? You mean I smell repulsive?"

"No! No, definitely not." Ivy laughed and planted a chaste little kiss on my shoulder. "God, between your scent and hers, you smell like sunshine and happiness and everything worth fighting for. I can't help biology, though. I think she smells wonderful, but I'm still wired not to be turned on by Erica under any circumstances, even if her scent is mixing with yours. It's..."

"A natural safeguard in case you lose your mind and entertain thoughts of snacking on her." I recited from memory what Reed had told me when we rescued Ivy's baby sister. "I know. It's why Erica found your blood so gross when you fed it to her. Too much DNA in common. Shit."

"Something like that, yes." I felt Ivy nod. "Imagine trying to have sex in a cold shower, and you'll have a pretty good idea what it's like for me right now. It's physiologically impossible for me to want you until you stop smelling like her."

"_I_ feel I could have sex in the cold shower right now..." I grumbled. "Hell, I'll take twenty showers if it gets me laid tonight." I offered weakly, knowing it probably wouldn't do much good. Evolution had made a vampire's scent notoriously difficult to remove from one's body. Erica's scent would cling to me until it either faded on its own with time or another vamp's scent overpowered it. Obviously, that's why Ivy wouldn't let me move, and why she was nuzzling me everywhere. She was working on the problem, but it could take all night to get me smelling like her instead of her baby sister... and fuck me if her nose, lips, hands, breasts and calves rubbing against me everywhere helped with my sexual frustration!

"Oh, come on!" I exclaimed, the pitch of my voice getting higher the lower Ivy's touch got. "I can't possibly smell like her there!" I couldn't conceive the anatomical possibility of Erica's scent having made its way to that low and sensitive spot where Ivy was touching me, but it didn't stop her hand's delicious stroking motion. Under normal circumstances, I would have been more than happy about it, but I knew there was no follow-up to that coming, and I was going nuts! "Ivy, y-you got to be kidding me..." I stammered, panting after her hand brushed against the underside of my breasts. "You're practically sexing me up a-already. You don't have to lick me or anything, just-just use your fingers, go through the motions, or-or God help me, I'll..." Whatever I was about to say was drowned out in a groan of pure frustration. I swear to God, I was on the verge of tears, and she'd only been at it for a few minutes. I could NOT endure a whole morning of this.

"I'm so sorry, my little witch." Ivy murmured in my ear, sounding anything but. "I know what this must feel like to you, but I really don't think I can do anything really libidinous to you right now. To me this is really more like tickling you than anything else. As good as it feels to hold you, I could go all night like this and never get turned on. Get on your belly, please? I'll start on your back." She asked pleasantly, nudging me with firm, gentle hands until she got my reluctant self on her stomach. The vampire immediately climbed on top of me, her legs coming on either side of mine, her hands pressing down on my shoulder blades, effectively pinning me down while she started rubbing my back and shoulders. Her massaging caresses were almost a relief... at least until her lips started following her hands' lead. With languorous slowness, she ran her fingers down my spine, spreading tiny butterfly kisses in their wake, all the way to the small of my back and back up again.

"Jesus, j-just stop!" I begged her. "If you're gonna do this all day, then I quit! I'll sleep upstairs! Better yet, I'll go home!" _After I use up all of your parents' cold water..._ I added mentally. Shut up. It made loads of sense to me.

"This is the only sun-proof room left in the house, and I'm not letting you drive during the day if your eyes are really as sensitive to sunlight as you said." Ivy countered me from about the height of my hips, her lips never missing a goddamn beat. "Besides, that's only delaying the inevitable. If you want us to have a sex life again, we're gonna have to do this sooner or later. Might as well be now, right?" She added reasonably just as she pushed away from me, letting me breathe a sigh of relief only to make it worst again, this time by laying squarely on top of me and slowly rubbing me with her whole body, like a big tabby cat in heat (yet somehow incapable of getting turned on... seriously, _fuck me_). With one hand she pushed my hair out of the way so she could nuzzle my shoulder and neck. My pulse shot up even higher than it already was when she closed in on my scars, because I'm sure I would have literally exploded if she set them off again. Being ready to give up my firstborn for her to fuck me was one thing, being willing to do the same for a bite was another. I'd threaded those waters once already, I didn't need to do so again.

"What the... wait a minute." A light bulb lit up in my lust-addled brain at the thought, making me blink. "Ivy, how come you didn't mind when Erica was with us in the study? You actually... drew blood back there... How did you do that?" Ivy ignored me, preferring to get me on my back rather than answer. "No." I shook my head violently, my eyes widening at the sight of the vamp looming over me like a gorgeous black storm cloud of pure sexual frustration. "You're not touching anything on that side unless you promise to follow through! I mean it- Iv-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y! Damnit, you pig-headed vamp!" I keened whiningly; of course, she didn't listen to me. Fluidly, she dove for my stomach, nuzzling and caressing exactly the same way she had on my back, only this time she was hitting much more sensitive buttons.

My hands shook pretty badly, but I managed to grip her long dark locks, tugging on them until I could get her away from my bellybutton and get her eyes level with mine. "Tickles! Cut it out!" I yelled at her, my voice clipping almost brutishly. "Answer me. How come Erica's scent didn't bother you when she was asleep on your lap?" I panted, my eyes narrowing at the way Ivy's brown gaze was twinkling. I had a growing suspicion I was getting played. "Did you lie to me?"

"Not at all." Ivy smiled innocently. "You do smell like Erica, although I think at this rate you won't anymore in a few hours." I groaned loudly at that insinuation. My eyes almost rolled back in their sockets at the thought of hours more of this torture. "It is a _big_ turn-off." She whispered deviously in my ear, on her way to rubbing her cheek against mine. I had to brace against her shoulders to push her away before she could start again. "Rachel, I'd love nothing more than to go down on you, but you must understand I can't right now." She said airily, her eyes darting downwards for a fraction of a second to illustrate her thought. I would have blushed at the double entendre of my gesture if I didn't desperately want exactly what she was suggesting. As it was, it just made my state worse to think of her mouth between my legs, doing delightfully wicked... Guh.

"Then how did you manage to make out with me when Erica was around?" I snapped at her, bringing the subject of her sister's scent on me back up.

"Hmm. Well, that's a good question. How _did_ I manage it?" Ivy cheekily wondered out loud. "I suppose I must have... held my breath?" She suggested, her mischievous smile broadening. For a second I thought she was joking; then I remembered her lack of dependence on oxygen, and I realised she was, and she was making me the butt of the joke.

"You held your... You ASS!" I yelled at Ivy, the vampire bursting out laughing as I did. Seeing red, I reached above my head, scrambling for any object I could use to bludgeon her to death with. It only made Ivy's hilarity worse when I started pounding her over the head with one of the pillows. "You stupid, blood-sucking, blue-balling ass!" I yelled again, hammering her in time with my words. "You couldn't have mentioned that earlier? Sometime before I melted into a puddle?"

Ivy was still laughing, laughing so hard in fact that I managed to knock her off me with a mighty blow. Getting on my knees, I loomed over her, the pillow held high over the vamp, and brought my fearsome wrath down upon her over and over again, 'beating' her thoroughly with it until I was breathing hard and Ivy looked on the verge of spontaneously shattering her own ribs in laughter.

"You're gonna pay for that, Fang Girl!" I seethed when I finally paused, breathless for wholly different reasons now (though I was still feeling more than a little of the earlier ones). "You're not the only one who can go all night!" _Can't get turned on, my ass!_ I raged at the sight of the obviously damp curls nestled between the laughing vampire's thighs; clearly, she'd been getting off on frustrating me. Oh, I was going to show her. This pillow would be the fluffy instrument of my all-mighty revenge.

Unfortunately for my righteous pillow-crusade reckoning, the second those words made it past my lips Ivy made her move. Quicker than thought, the vampire wrenched the pillow from me and shoved me back down, pinning me to the mattress with a hand on my chest and looking down at me with what can only be described as a shit-eating grin plastered on her face. Her teeth looked very, very white next to the curtain of hair that tickled my face as she lowered herself towards me, and I swallowed loudly at the sight. She wouldn't bite me now... would she?

"Aw, poor itchy-witch." She cooed in a perfect parody of my earlier tone instead, wrenching my narrowing eyes from her sharp ivory canines back to her amused gaze. "The big bad vamp is being so mean to you."

"I hate you." I hissed at her, but it didn't stop her slow descent. Since I looked ready to bite her face off, she wisely angled her mouth for my nose to plant a little kiss on the tip of it.

"It definitely doesn't feel like hate in here." She ran her fingers over the interior of my thighs, murmuring cockily before she vanished in a blink, leaving a little girly giggle hanging in the air.

"I mean it. You are the most loathsome- whoa!" Seemingly of its own accord my ass lifted off the bed, the firm pillow I'd been using to tenderize Ivy's face materialising beneath it when it came down, leaving my back slightly arched and my aching core vulnerable and exposed. Before I even had a chance to understand what was happening, Ivy nudged my knees apart to make room for herself to lie in between them, her arms looping below my legs and around my hips so her hands rested low on my middle, trapping me. Still peeved, I tried to wiggle out of her grip, but with a quiet half-purr, half-growl sound of warning, Ivy nipped me on the thigh, not quite hard enough to draw blood but definitely enough to snatch all of my attention; whether she did it to arouse me or to assert her dominance was really anyone's guess, but needless to say, feeling the sharpness of her formidable fangs made me go very still all of a sudden. Seriously, how the hell could she speak without a lisp with those things in her mouth?

"You know, the past half hour was entirely your fault." Ivy righteously declared once she was satisfied I wouldn't try to break free again, her little nip turning into a little kiss, and another, and another, slowly trailing down my thigh, getting my blood pressure up higher and higher as she drew nearer to her obvious destination.

"MY fault?" I spat, stung, at her, earning myself another pinch of her fangs. "You're the one who pretended we couldn't have sex." I yelped and added more quietly, though I was still tossing daggers at her with my eyes, despite the threat of her very sharp teeth so close to very sensitive parts of my anatomy. I wasn't sure if a bite there would be the most awesome thing ever, or whatever the polar opposite of the most awesome thing ever is, but as sexually frustrated as I was, I didn't feel too experimental.

"Hmm, no, I think you did that, all of last week, actually. As I recall I've been nudging you to spend time with me, but you never agreed. Maybe you should be a little more equalitarian when you offer yourself next time. I might get jealous that you spend all your time with another, younger vamp..." She trailed off, her lips just barely skirting my center before moving to my hip and onto my lower belly.

"I knew you were pissed..." I groaned, falling back on the bed with my hands covering my face. Swell, she was sooooo gonna let me have it. "Ivy, I didn't do it to piss you off, it had nothing to do with you at all. She was hurting, and crying and it just... happened. Be mad at yourself, you're the one who got me over my hang-ups about vamp bites!"

"No worries." Ivy shook her head, the movement causing her long ebony hair to tickle me. I almost twitched at the sensation, but her grip on me was so unyielding it didn't even show. "I'm not angry at you for donating blood to my little sister in her time of need. As a matter of fact, I think it was kind of sweet of you to take care of her like that." Ivy explained sweetly from a position that could either be described as 'perfectly suited for giving head' or 'really not fucking suited for a long-ass speech'. "I am a little mad at you for neglecting me at the same time, though. Really, all I wanted was one sleep over, one dinner date or even one little evening visit for coffee. I wouldn't even have minded if you brought her along, but even that was too much to ask." She sighed dramatically, meeting my glare over the length of my body with a look that was both naughty and strict. My ire faltered, and I swallowed loudly at the fire in her eyes, my mind coming up with all sorts of implications for being trapped in bed with Ivy while she was 'a little mad' at me. Maybe I should have heeded that earlier warning about locking myself in a room with her, because now, she looked like she was gonna take it out on my hide.

"Now, you're going to make it up to me. Oh, I won't be too cruel, I promise." She reassured me wickedly when I winced at that. "I don't have anything out of the vamp dating guide in mind. We're just going to have sex at a different pace this time, and you're going to be cooperative, eager and vocal about it."

"What do you mean, a 'different pace'?" I asked with wary hesitancy. Did she mean really fast and hard... or excruciatingly slow? I wasn't even sure which was worse. One could put me in the emergency room, sure, but the other could just as easily land me in a mental ward.

"I don't mean I'll pound into you with all my speed and strength. I don't want to put you in tractions, silly."Ivy 'reassured' me with a sinful laugh and a rub of her cheek against my thigh. "No, I mean quite the opposite. As a lover, you're wonderful, truly, so responsive I can barely keep myself in check around you. But you're so impatient too. It's like sex is a race for you. I can't say I'm not down for a quickie once in a while," she smiled, no doubt thinking about the fingernail scratches on the felt of Kisten's pool table, scratches she had left there in circumstances I did not want to know about, "but there's more to it than reaching orgasm, you know. You haven't given me a chance to truly draw out our pleasure since we got together. Now that we have all the time we need, I want to take you to the very brink, my little witch, and see how long I can keep you there. I want you to feel like your fulfilment is so close you can taste it on your tongue, and deny you until your sanity is slipping like water through your fingers. If you're a good girl, once you can't take it anymore, I'll let you to come undone; not before. "

Notice how she didn't add "and not after" to that last sentence? Okay, maybe she wouldn't let me have it after all, if you consider 'it' to be a violently wanted and desperately needed orgasm...

"You did that already." I pointed out what I thought was obvious in a tiny, winded voice, clearly affected by the surreal sexual quality of Ivy's grey silk voice. "Can we skip forward to the orgasm part now? Please? I promise I'll return the favour after." I offered, trying to sound enticing despite feeling like a boiling teakettle about to burst. Ivy clucked her tongue in response, her head slowly moving from side to side. "Once for every time Erica bit me? Once for every day of the week I so stupidly refused to see you? Over and over until I've got cramps so bad I can't move anymore or you pass out, whichever comes first?" Every offer was met with the same response. No, no, and no.

"You don't understand; it's not my own pleasure I crave, Dear Heart. It's yours." Ivy explained sultrily, her mouth now back at the junction of my hip and thigh, slowly moving up to my soft and exposed mound, making me twitch. She was so close now I could feel ghosts of her touch on the place where I desperately wanted her. Great, now my memories were jumping in on the teasing... "You gave me tremendous pleasure the last time, especially for a debutante, but I don't need you to touch me much tonight. I can assure you I'll follow you right over the edge when I finally let you fall. Pleasing you will be just as pleasurable to me as it will to you, so the more tremendous your orgasm, the more pleasure I'll derive from it."

"If that's true, then. Get. On. With. It." I whined in a clipped tone, my teeth gritting together. Damn, this woman was really starting to piss me off. She was the one who got off on delayed satisfaction, not me. "Go ahead already! Dig in! Please yourself on me, if that's what gets your rocks off!"

"'Dig in', really? Now you're being crude. And so very impatient..." She took her lips off me, making me fall back on the mattress, torn between relief and frustration. I shot right back upright when a flutter of cool air drew across the slick flesh of my most intimate parts.

"Wha-what-What are you doing?" I stuttered, the barely-there teasing positively maddening.

"What does it feel like I'm doing?" Ivy asked sultrily.

"Ivy, I want you to blow me, not- gah, blow on me!"

"Oh, is that what you want? I can never tell the two apart."

"You are being such a fucking- OW!"

"Don't swear in bed, Honey. I hate it. It's not attractive." Ivy chastised me off-handily as she released the pressure of her fingernails digging into my hips, her attention obviously elsewhere. She wasn't looking at me anymore, she was staring straight at my exposed sex, her pink tongue slowly running over her very red lips, wetting them and making them shiny in the subdued light from the nearby lamps in anticipation of what was to come. Using her fingers, she gently spread my nether lips, and as lightly as the brush of a butterfly's wing, she began to blow with horrible softness at my sensitive flesh, her plump lips I craved like a madwoman a perfect half-inch away.

"Fu-u-uck!" I cried out. Ivy was relentless, her exhalation going on and on and on, the cool current of air chipping away at my sanity until I couldn't stand another second of it. My hips bucked uselessly against the steel circle of Ivy's arms, my own arms and feet slipping on the coverlet as I scrambled for the grip I deluded myself in thinking could help me wrench myself away from her. My squirming did no good at all; my hips and buttocks, shaking with effort, remained firmly planted on the pillow, as effectively immobilised by the vampire's strength as they would be if someone had poured concrete over them.

"Try to relax. Breathe." Ivy whispered soothingly, her mouth still maddeningly hovering over that pulsing ache her breath was stoking. "I'll take care of you in a minute."

"Can't... I can't..." I gasped and twitched, my feet slipping on the coverlet when I tried to jerk towards her. Hoping to stave off some of the crushing waves of frustration, I gripped handful of my hair, but the painful tug didn't even take my attention off what she was doing for a second. "Iveedisisnfunnee-ee-ee!" I cried out the nearly shapeless words, unable to take it anymore. Flexing my abs, I bent my upper body towards her quickly and reached for her raven-wing locks in an attempt to pull her where I needed her, but, big surprise, my hands never made it to her hair. In a flash, Ivy snatched them out of the air and pulled them down, needing only one hand to pin them on my belly by the wrists.

"So impatient." She growled again. "This is not what I call being a good girl, Rachel. In fact, if you don't start behaving soon, I can promise I won't give you satisfaction." Oh, surprise, that promise didn't help me keep still, but after several seconds squirming under her stern black eyes, I managed to get my 'good-girl' act together enough for Ivy to stop teasing. With a sigh the vampire puckered her lips and lightly, much too lightly for my raging need, pressed them to my sex, kissing the most intimate part of me thoroughly and, despite her annoyance with my lack of patience, lovingly, before letting the tip of her tongue just peak out of her mouth, teasing the entrance to my body.

_About damn time..._ I thought with the last of my rationality.

I went rigid as Ivy's tongue earnestly began to slide up and down and circling my clit. I actually managed to keep still for a little while, the mounting pleasure of her mouth on me and the promise for more giving me the will to do so. My body taut as a piano wire, I was almost crying in frustration by the time I neared my peak after an excruciating ascent, made frantic by Ivy slowing her pace so she could hold me there, denying me. I needed release so badly, I didn't care if I had to rip my hands off to get her to let go of me.

"This isn't going to work, is it?" The vampire reprimanded me when I uselessly tried to wrench my hands away from her grasp. I didn't want her slowing down, I wanted her to finish me off, damnit! "My God, Rachel, I'm just getting started." She complained, spacing out her words with broad, nearly aimless and unsatisfying swaths of her tongue, the little bundle of nerve she had just been divinely adoring, which was still clamouring for just a tiny bit more of her attention, going suddenly ignored. "You really need to learn some patience."

"Don't stop!" I begged her frantically, wanting her mouth and tongue back to work right this fucking second. "Ivy, please. Find your heart, for fuck's sake!" I canted my hips with all my uncoordinated strength, so violently that, for all the good it did me, I managed to loosen the vampire's hold for a fraction of a second. I didn't have time to do anything before my lover and tormentor caught me again, chuckling ominously.

"Fine, be like that. If you can't be pliant and cooperative like I want you to on your own, I guess I'll have to teach you how..." Ivy announced forebodingly, something sinister and _dangerously_ sexual going on behind her black eyes, making me gulp in worry. "I'll let you go now, but I'll be right back. If you try to touch yourself in the meantime, you'll be making what's coming even worse for you. Do you understand?" Ivy warned me in a soft but inflexible voice. Without waiting for a reply, she crawled over to my mouth for a quick kiss then released me, getting off the bed and scanning the floor for something. I tried, I mean, I seriously _tried_ to listen to what she had said, but I was so worked up that I failed miserably, and with no conscious effort on my part my hand made its way between my legs. Unfortunately for me, Ivy wasn't kidding when she said she wouldn't be gone for long, and I'd barely run a shameful and hesitant finger once up my sex that already she was back. With a playful growl, Ivy snatched my hand away, bringing it between us so we could both see the glistening of my need on the tip of my middle finger.

"What did I say?" The vampire slowly shook her head, looking amused and exasperated at once, and brought the finger to her lips, kissing, licking and sucking away the moisture until it was clean. My eyes widened at the feel of her tongue, and incredibly hot sight, of her, and she met them with a sultry look, slowly pulled my finger out of her mouth, smirked a bit at my expression...

"I said no touching."

...and promptly twisted my arm behind my back. I cried out in discomfort that bordered on pain, my protests going unheeded by the vampire whose knee was pressing down against my lower back. Effortlessly, Ivy grabbed my other wrist, showing off her law enforcement training (or was that her dominatrix streak?), and before I knew it, she had both of them tied up behind my back, using the belt she got off the floor to immobilise me. Desperately, I tried to wiggle out, but Ivy clearly knew what she was doing when it came to this kind of activities. The belt wouldn't give me an ounce of leeway, holding my wrists in place as effectively as a pair of cuffs would. I was left immobilised and helpless on the coverlet, naked, squirming and wiggling while an apex sexual predator that was less than pleased with me had me square in her sights. _Mommy..._

Being able to walk tomorrow suddenly seemed like a very farfetched idea.

"Mmm, you've got such a gorgeous body. You look scrumptious like that, little witch. I should definitely tie you up more often. I've got this pair of nice padded leather cuffs back home that would look great on you. They're much more comfortable than this thing, you'll see." Ivy mused as she took a second to appreciate her handiwork, her hands slowly running down the lean muscles of my straining back and my buckling shoulders as she made soothing sounds for my benefit, sounds that were about as calming as the snarling of a hungry panther. "I know you won't like this right away, Dear Heart," Ivy apologised in my ear, giving me no hint as to what 'this' would consist of, "but the sooner you relax and let go, the sooner you'll enjoy yourself."

"What are you up to?" I panted worriedly. Things were not going according to plan so far.

"Why spoil the surprise? You're a smart girl. I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough." She sounded enthusiastic about whatever she had in mind, which made me very nervous considering how our little encounter had unfolded so far. With the ease granted to her by her superhuman strength, Ivy manhandled my struggling body to the edge of the bed, where she sat and promptly settled my belly over her lap, my back slightly bowed so my ass was sticking out in the air.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me..." I groaned when I realised just what it was Ivy had in mind. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what this position was most suited for. Not something that was on my sexual curriculum, and I was in no hurry to add it. "You're not going to... are you?" No way. She couldn't possibly have _that_ in mind. Her vamp strength was far too much. She'd break something. If she truly didn't want me in traction, THAT was not the way to go about it.

"Oh, yes I am. Have you ever been spanked, darling?" Ivy asked sensuously, her hand massaging my admittedly great butt, making me squirm with equal measure dread and... some really dirty feeling I wasn't comfortable examining closer. At all. "I'm not surprised. There's hardly a single submissive bone in you. I had a feeling you never let anyone do this. It's going to be a deflowering of sorts, then." Her following giggle? Creepiest thing ever.

"Here's how it's going to work. I'm going to touch you, and you're going to stay very still and take it until I decide you've been good enough. If you complain, or you struggle, or you try to come before I tell you to, this is what's going to happen..." Her hands left my ass, one of them pressing down on my shoulder blades to keep me still, and my whole body tensed in anticipation of the incoming slap. I got pretty much what I expected; she hadn't used most of her strength (I could tell because my bones hadn't snapped like twigs), but a sharp pain zinged through my buttocks a millisecond after an equally sharp sound was heard. My teeth had been gritted against the coming blow, but a loud yelp erupted from my mouth anyway, to Ivy's obvious delight. Literally purring, the vampire caressed the burning mark her hand had left on my ass, and without warning lifted her hand and brought it down again on the other cheek, making them match. "And this is going to happen if you don't express your gratitude enough." Fawning over her handiwork, she soothed the fierce heat with her cool hands while I was left gasping for breath, reeling from the pair of slaps. The burning pain mixed with the ache between my legs to combine into an unreal sensation that, God help me, I wasn't sure I didn't like.

"This is a really bad idea!" I squealed, trying to sound like the spanking had been entirely unpleasant, the high pitch of my voice and the tight curling of my toes probably betraying me. Goddamnit, what was wrong with me? "Leave my butt alone!"

"I think this is a stupendously good idea." Ivy replied in a smouldering vampiric tone that made me twist around in hope of catching a reassuring glimpse of humanity in her eyes, because there sure wasn't any in her voice. Just as well I couldn't; from the sound of her, the hunger in her gaze might have scared me enough to tip her into forbidden territories. "You're the one making up to me, and this is what I want." She said with the entitled finality of a spoiled child, lightly tapping my no-doubt beet red ass cheeks with her finger.

"No. Think of something else." I shot back categorically.

"I spank you, or you let me drink from you. Either your butt or your neck is agreeable to me, but I will abuse one today. It's up to you, my little witch." Ivy growled, less than impressed, turning instantly from light-hearted and playful to domineering, the fingers of her hand stroking my back crooking into claws that lightly, and deliciously, scratched along the curve they were tracing. "Or, if you prefer, I can tie you up to the headboard so I can listen to you beg and watch you squirm. Maybe set off your scars and let you cook off for a few hours... that would be lovely too."

"Then we'd both be in sexual limbo." I replied, failing in my pathetic attempt to sound forceful. I could keep Ivy from completely dominating me outside the bedroom with relative ease, but when the clothes off came off, I was quickly finding out she was like a fickle, less-than-merciful goddess; indomitable and capricious. "Where would that leave us, Ms Compulsive-Planner?"

"Why, in a situation where only one of us is free to touch herself of course, while the other can only... watch... and... listen." Ivy answered, leaning over me to whisper in my ear. Her voice was so husky it practically wiped all thoughts from my mind. "Would I prefer your pretty little mouth or those nice rough fingers of yours bringing me to fulfilment? Of course, but it would be infinitely worse for you, and still deliciously wicked for me. Is that your choice? Please tell me that's your choice. I'm warming up to the idea by the second." I could only swallow and shake my head in response, something low inside of me clenching violently from her eager tone. "Will you let me give you a little slip of fangs, then? You get all the instant gratification your petty impatience for things of the flesh can handle, and I get satisfaction for you offering yourself to my sister but not me. That's fair, I think."

"No." I answered immediately. "No blood."

"No strings attached, promise..." The vampire added, the roll of her eyes all but audible in her suddenly much flatter voice. "God, one of these days I'll get it through your thick skull I'm not interested in-"

"No." I stated unyieldingly, cutting whatever reassurances she was about to utter short. "No. Blood. Not even a drop."

"Then this", she lightly tapped my ass to illustrate what she meant, "is all that's left, isn't it?" _Crap... trust her, right?_ I silently thought, and tried to relax. "If you're done complaining, we have business to get down to. Remember, hold still, and feel free to show appreciation." Ivy chided me as her nimble hand slipped between my legs, stroking my inner thigh without waiting for any further consent from me. My skin felt so hot in contrast and I was aching so badly I had to tense again not to writhe on her lap even though she was still inches away from the epicentre of my carnal lust. Sensing my sudden effort of will, Ivy decided to be an evil(er) bitch. From their slow, agonising crawl towards toward my center I could mentally and physically brace myself against, her fingers jumped straight to my clit like they were laser-guided, the smooth pad of her index circling it with unbearable, perfect precision, making me cry out loudly. Urgently, I arched into her touch, hopelessly attempting to increase the contact of her hand with the engorged little nub and giving Ivy exactly what she wanted in the process. 'Hold still' had been the first rule, and Instantly, the vampire took her heavenly finger away, punishing me for my disobedience and leaving me limply sagging, just in time to receive the second half of my punishment. Four times she struck my ass cheeks, her timing as flawless as a pendulum's, each slap reverberating on the little bud she had been touching a second earlier, making me throb.

"Really, is it so hard to hold still and let me play with you?" Ivy sighed with mocking exasperation. "You're making it look so much more complicated than it is."

"Screw you!" I whimpered thoughtlessly through gritted teeth, earning myself another pair of slaps that set my ass on fire. Panting like a woman possessed, I bit down on the coverlet to keep myself from moaning wantonly, confused beyond words by the effect her spanking and her domination was having on me.

"You won't be able to sit down tomorrow if you keep this up..." Ivy chuckled as she gently rubbed my sore, flaming rump, no doubt in preparation for making it worse in the near future. "Oooh, I think the damage is already done actually." She crooned delightedly. "I'm in charge, Rachel. You're bottom for now. Stop trying to top me, and I'll make sure you can't stand tomorrow either. For all the right reasons of course."

I didn't answer that. I didn't want to open my mouth again, for fear of what would come out, unsure whether it would be vindictive or pleading. My natural disposition was not submission, but Ivy was slowly getting me to bend for her... and part of me liked it. I kept my mouth tightly shut, scrunching up my eyes and gnashing my teeth together when her hand found its way between my legs again. Ivy was making soft, approving noises at my near-compliance, and if I wanted this little game to end and get my climax sometime in the next decade, I had to keep that approval.

"My, my... you're more responsive to this than I thought." She marvelled sultrily as her fingers began to swirl around down there anew, forcing me to bury my burning face in the coverlet. "You're loving this, aren't you? Hmm? Tell me you love it, Dear Heart..." The vampire whispered as she slowly pushed the tip of one finger inside of me. Long and dextrous, the exploring digit began to expertly stroke and rub my pulsing passage, some of the spots it found driving all the air from my lungs.

"No, I don't..." I barely managed to catch my breath to deny it, even though it was increasingly obvious Ivy was on to something, and I had to focus hard not to admit the truth.

"Li-ar." Ivy said in a sing-song voice. "Liar, liar, pants on fire... well, pant seats on fire, anyway." She added gleefully. "Be honest. I'm not a sadist. It makes it all the more fun if you admit you like it..."

"I don't!" I reiterated more forcefully, forgetting myself when she stilled her fingers and left me hanging, waiting for a reply. Sensing what was coming, I braced for the four slaps that landed a second later, the pain sharper and hotter than ever, yet I managed not to cry out this time. Ivy was either feeling extra mean or extra cheated by my stubborn silence, though, because as soon as I got used to it and managed to relax my muscles, she landed another pair of lightning fast blows that made my body arch and tore a cry from my throat. Sagging, I landed back on the bed, the first tears of need beginning to flow onto the coverlet, the first sobs of confusion starting to quiver my body. "Bitch..." I stupidly rasped feebly, expending the thin, tattered remains of my willpower.

She brought the count to eight successive slaps then, and just about killed any defiance I had left dead. Once the cracks of her hand against my backside subsided, I was left laying limp on her lap, crying with need and turned on beyond words under the absolute sway of another person, something I _never_ thought I'd crave so violently. We were playing cat and mouse, I was the mouse, and couldn't believe how much I liked it. This just wasn't a side of me I recognised, but it was getting harder to deny it by the second.

"It's okay, you know." Ivy murmured compassionately, the back of her free hand gently caressing down my shoulder blades while its twin began to titillate me once more. "I know it's hard work being you all the time, always in charge, never wavering, even when people judge you and label you unfairly. It's okay to need someone else to take over for a while. It's a lot of pressure you're living with every day. You're not a freak for needing me like this, or getting turned on by what I'm doing." She hit the nail on the head at the same time she did my clit, and my sobs redoubled as I was brought up to the edge once again with little to no hope of finally tumbling off it. The burning throb of my ass was slowly spreading to every erogenous spot I had, and God, I needed to come so badly...

"All right then, I'll make you a deal. Admit you like getting to be bottom like this, and I'll pretend I'm satisfied." Ivy purred, her voice as smooth and comforting as warm honey. "Do that, and I'll finish you off and take care of you all day long. I promise I'll untie you and please you however you want until you're too sated to keep your eyes open. Whether you want my mouth, my fingers, my fangs, anything you want, I'll give you. You just have to admit one shameless little truth we can both see plain as day. Is that so scary?"

"Yes... no... maybe..." I hiccupped, not managing to make much sense. "I don't... I don't know anymore, Ivy. I need you so bad, I... please, just fuck me..."

That answer wasn't good enough for Ivy. The gorgeous sadist that held me at her mercy wouldn't take any uncertainty, or negativity for that matter, for an answer. She wanted that admittance of enjoyment, and if I didn't offer it willingly she planned to extract it from my hide one spanking at a time. I have no idea how long she kept her little game going, her fingers bringing me up, holding me over the edge and stoking me until I felt ready to burst then leaving my center blindingly fast to spank me, the pain dragging me back down while her dominance and my helplessness before it turned me on and frightened me ever further, making the cycle of my need for her even more intense when her fingers slipped back in and it started anew. Before long I was completely incoherent, sobbing madly in lust and frustration, but Ivy remained merciless to the very end, when I sensed she couldn't push me further without her 'pleasant' (I use the term loosely) torment became straight-up torture.

"No more... no more! I can't take it... Ivy, I can't take it anymore... please!" I implored Ivy frantically when the time came again for her to spank away the pleasure she had built up. Sadistically, she pulled her hand away slowly this time, taking the time to scratch her fingernails along the slick interior of my thighs with one hand while gripping the back of my neck with the other to keep me still when. I began to trash in her grip, desperate to either get away or orgasm myself into oblivion.

Bad, bad, baaad idea.

A snarl coming from Ivy's throat was all the warning I got before the world turned to black, the vampire having thrown me off her lap and ruthlessly pinned me face-first into the mattress, forcing my head to dig into the coverlet with a painful grip on my hair. Twin, diamond hard peaks dug into my back as she covered my body with hers, and four little pinpricks of ice closed in on my jugular, making me go absolutely still in terror. I was covered in six feet of fully vamped out Ivy; a twitch could trip her into sinking those fangs in, consenting or not.

"Move a muscle before I tell you to, and you will bleed." Ivy raggedly warned me, her voice thick with hunger. Roughly, she shoved my knees apart and wedged her legs between them, so I couldn't keep mine closed even if I tried. Without an ounce of care, she then wrenched us both upright, one of her hand finding its way back to my center with unerring accuracy, the other gripping my shoulder and pushing downward, so that I was jack-knifed around the fingers fucking me, helpless and nearly smothered. Ivy's grunts of pleasure began to fill the room as my butt was thrust into her crotch and she met it halfway, grinding herself up against my flaming ass. She was at least as soaking wet as I was, her arousal so abundant I felt it drip between my cheeks as she mounted me like an animal. That's what it was. There was no tenderness here, no caring, just animalistic instinct, sex competing with bloodlust in Ivy's mind to decide whether I'd be her snack tonight or not.

And even through that terrifying ordeal, even though she'd clearly lost it, she STILL didn't slip up and let me climax. Fuck. Me.

Eventually, her grunts gave way to sharp gasps and long moans, her grip on me tightening as the lucky bitch braced herself for her own orgasm, then loosening when she slumped forward on top of me, her chest heaving against my back. Back to her 'affectionate' self now that she'd tempered her bloodlust through sexual satisfaction, she nuzzled my back, a lazy sigh escaping her.

"You are so mule-headed... look what you made me do." Ivy clucked her tongue with naughty disapproval as she flipped my limp, burning body around and took the sight of the sweaty, trembling mess I'd become. Smiling, like she hadn't just come within a hair's breadth of losing it, she helped me sit upright and pulled me back in her lap, one of her arms snaking around my quivering shoulders to hold me face to face with her. "Wouldn't it have been easier to work with me? Always flirting with disaster. I guess you wouldn't really be you if you didn't live on the razor's edge, would you?"

"Please..." The coarse, rasping warble was all I could manage. I would have begged on my knees if my muscles hadn't turned into noodles and my arms weren't still tied behind my back. Ivy chuckled at my pleading, a soft, satisfied smile spreading her lips. Gently, she kissed my quivering lips, whispering a soft promise that it wouldn't be much longer now, the silkiness of her voice nonetheless ripping a whimper of desperation from my throat. My God, I couldn't take 'not much longer'. I needed an orgasm right now. In fact, I could've found use for a buttload of them.

The plaintive sound only amused Ivy further, and it made the pace of her fingers between my legs seem even more leisurely. Her eyes were riveted to mine, her air turning lazy and almost complacent as my pleasure and desperation grew, and I became more and more frantic. Her fingers glided in and out of me with practiced ease, sometimes simply stroking, others crooking and rubbing in a way that made me keen in intense variations of pleasure I'd never experienced before. Her thumb brushed against my clit, titillating the little nub until it was so stimulated I could barely tell if it felt good or not. Too much, too much, it was just way too much, and in her first display of kindness since we got into bed she let me bury my face in the hollow of her neck, holding me tighter while my climax dangled before me, nanometres out of my reach.

"Just a little more. You're doing great." She whispered to me, right before I realised it wasn't compassion but devilishness that made her hold me this way. She had breathed those words right over my demon scars, and in the state I was in, it was enough to set them off.

You know what the worst part is? Even with the added pressure of my scars Ivy was deft enough not to let me fall over the edge and come undone. The two sensations, the one she'd been drawing out since what sure felt like the dawn of time and the fresh ones that spilled in a torrent from my neck, pushed by my racing heart through my entire body, were like oil and water; I felt the effect of both, but for the first time since I'd been marked by Al they didn't actually mix. Perhaps it had something to do with the rhythm of Ivy's hand between my thighs that changed almost imperceptibly, becoming lighter and slower so she kept expertly denying me even though it challenged all the laws of this world or the next that I still hadn't come undone. Perhaps she was morbidly interested in seeing what it would take to make me explode under the strain she was putting on me. That outcome was certainly becoming more likely by the second. My body rebelled against the sensual assault, so violently that if it wasn't restrained by Ivy's grip I probably would have broken my spine arching back. The vampire enjoyed the feel of me a great deal right where I was, if the small groans and moans and gasps she kept making were any indication, so all I could manage was a strangled cry...

...And a powerful clamp of my teeth on her jugular.

I'm not a big enough liar to tell you it was some perfectly executed plan on my part. With Ivy's hand where it was, all the things she did to me in the past hour AND my scars set off, I was beyond higher thoughts process at that point. However, even if it never was that bad, I was used to nibbling or downright biting a vamp's neck when I was so close to climaxing, something Kisten could attest to if he were still alive. The way Ivy cradled me had simply triggered that reflex. Willing or not, I couldn't exactly argue with the result, though. She'd been working herself up again, and so the feel of my teeth tipped her over the edge. The vampire cried out, blissful and surprised at once, as my blunt teeth pressed into her flesh, her flawless skin supplely giving without breaking (vamps have fangs to bite other vamps; soft as it was, her skin always was as resilient as leather, much too tough for me to draw blood with such inappropriate tools), and I didn't need an ounce of her enhanced senses to know that little act had been enough; she definitely had just climaxed herself. Her fingers twitched inside of me, her thumb skidded clumsily against my clit, shattering the carefully maintained equilibrium Ivy had built up, while a potent cloud of pheromones enshrouded me, plunging a silver spike of white-hot pleasure straight through the core of my being, only Ivy's neck I still hadn't let go of smothering my screams as the most monumental climax of my life finally overtook me. Conceding the unavoidability of my victory with a modicum of grace, the woman who tormented me for so long finally began to take me earnestly, her fingers drawing out the more carnal aspect of my pleasure while her lips and tongue worried the scarred side of my neck, intensifying the sensations the tissue soaked in dormant vampire saliva gave me to the point I might have been scared she had drawn blood, if I still had a single brain cell that wasn't drowning in a flood of hormones and endorphins.

My body remained wracked with aftershocks of that monumental orgasm for some time, Ivy being compassionate enough not to simply withdraw and drop me on the floor once my pleasure began to subside. She eased me down from it, helping my breathing and my pulse slow down with gentle kisses that swallowed up the last of my half-rapturous, half-desperate cries, and soft strokes of her fingers. By the time I stopped shaking, I was feeling so drained there was almost an empty pit somewhere in the center of my being. Ivy might not have broken skin, but that hadn't stopped her from taking _everything_ from me.

"Jesus, Ivy... That's what you call not being too cruel?" I rasped once I felt I could speak again without sobbing, still in the same position on Ivy's lap, with the small, relieving change that I was no longer tied up. My shoulders were sore when I experimentally rolled them, the sensation dull and distant as my consciousness decided it didn't want to stick around long and I started to black out. My eyelids weighed a ton each, and so did my arms as I looped them around her neck to bury my face deeper in the hollow of her throat, tears streaming down my cheeks to wet the patch of sore, red skin the vampire hadn't yet healed. "Promise me you're not planning to make spankings a regular event on our sex life calendar? I think we're square now." I tried to joke to hide how shaken I was by what I had just experienced, but the quiver in my voice probably made me sound more like a condemned woman begging for a reprieve from the death penalty. This was the first time I'd come face to face with this long-suspected side of Ivy, the undead vamp side, the one that rejoiced at exerting its will over me, the possessive part that wanted to bend me for pleasure. There was almost no trace of it left now, though. The vampire held me firmly but gently, her left hand running slowly along the length of my side, caressing me in a lazy, or perhaps distracted, fashion while her right wrapped around my middle to hold me close. I nudged her with my nose, hoping to get her to give me some TLC after this. Call me a wuss, but I badly needed some tenderness, to remind myself there was more to her than that. Her taste for domination had always been there, even when she was still alive. Just because she'd let it express itself for once didn't mean Ivy was different in any significant fashion, or so I desperately needed to believe. I'd teased her too far, and it brought the monster out. My ass cheeks burned, but she hadn't bitten me, had she? She came close, but close calls were to be expected until we found our balance again, right? _God, I hope so..._

"Go to sleep, Rachel." Ivy told me almost wearily. I frowned, grumpily shutting my eyes and resting my head on her shoulder; it's not that that wouldn't happen very soon, but it was no reason to have such poor bedside manners. With a sigh of mild annoyance Ivy manoeuvred us onto our sides and into a more satisfactory position, her body embracing mine from behind. I tucked my legs closer, and hers followed until we were spooning together and I relaxed into the warmth and closeness I needed to balance out the intense experiences of the morning. What we had just done was almost as terrifying as it was mindblowing, and I felt very ready to hit the sack.

"I just don't understand... I thought we were doing so well. Why would you do this, Rachel? Why would you help him?"

It was the last thing I barely perceived through the dark haze encroaching over me, but I was already too far gone to give it any consideration, and as I slipped into velveteen darkness, her words didn't feel ominous at all.

* * *

Waking up from a deep sleep in an unfamiliar room with no windows or no source of natural light whatsoever is a bit of a disorienting feeling. Until you take a look around and find a clock of some kind, you have no clue at all how long you've been asleep, whether it was an hour or a week. There was still light in the guest room of the Tamwood mansion, but it was dim and easy on my eyes, even as I rubbed the sleep from them. Soft, heavy sheets covered me and my head was resting on a pillow, so Ivy had to have tucked me in once I passed out from her attentions. Considering her strength, that wasn't exactly unlikely. A bit stranger, but nice, was the fact I was no longer naked; instead, I'd been slipped into the lightest, most luscious silk nightgown you've ever seen, dark and shiny like a star-filled night sky, and the perfect length to be both enticing and decent, as the situation called for. A quick sniff of it confirmed my suspicion that it was a loaner from Ivy, probably what she had intended to wear today; it smelled just like her, and unlike the outfit I'd picked from her closet which smelled of the relaxing and homely incense of her living vampire self, this one had the sharper and spicier fragrances of the new her. The real kicker, though, was around my right wrist; a beautifully tooled silver bracelet, crafted in the likeness of a snake swallowing its tail, its eyes a pair of small, flawlessly cut emeralds. Nice bauble.

Yawning, I got on my back, stretching myself luxuriously from head to toe with a satisfied groan. Maybe there was something to Ivy's whole 'delayed/earth-shattering' approach to sex, because, damn, I felt great. My whole body was wonderfully sore and pleasantly tired out, no doubt from the same activities that left a delightful lingering buzz of sexual energy coursing through my limbs. As I finished shifting into my new position, however, my abused buttocks gave me an unpleasant jolt of pain, reminding me of the rather unorthodox (at least for me) techniques with which the vampire had brought this state of relaxed bliss upon me. The reminder made me doubly sorry my lover had stopped embracing me; unfortunately, just like that first morning after, said vampire was not under the sheets with me. Ivy was still in the room though, which could be considered an improvement, at least, but she would have some serious catching up to do on her cuddling quotas if she kept this up. I wasn't going to put up with this "fuck and run" approach to our sex life for much longer...

"Don't you think I deserve more than five seconds of spooning after what you put me through? Is there a rule written somewhere that says I can't wake up in your arms, ever?" I propped myself up on one elbow and sleepily asked the vampire sitting on the bed close by, unconsciously striking a coquettish pose. What? Even with all the spanking and the vamping out, you'd feel sexy too after spending the day with someone like Ivy. Her yummy back was to me, and as I flushed more and more my drowsiness from my system and took a closer look at her, I noticed she was sitting in a weird way, hugging her shins like a child trying to comfort herself. Unlike me, she was also naked, making her look extra vulnerable. "Ivy? Is something wrong?" I asked her, extricating myself from the covers and crawling over to her. Her lean and usually limber musculature was all bunched up when I laid my hands on her shoulders, its power almost too much for her lovely skin to contain. "What's the matter?" I put my arms around her from behind, embracing her comfortingly. If she wouldn't cuddle me, then screw it, I would cuddle her. So there. She was cool though, and it wasn't all that comfortable to touch her, but I held on anyway, and simply hoped she would flick the switch back on her vitals, like I knew she could.

"Nothing- Something... I'm not sure yet." Ivy replied distractedly, no more forthcoming than that. If she noticed I wrapped myself around her, she sure didn't show it.

"Is this from you?" I brought the bracelet to her eyes and asked sultrily, determined to up the ante. She nodded in answer, but gave no sign that she noticed me beyond that. "It's nice. Thanks." I breathed on her neck, choosing to bring out the big guns and nuzzling her gently, back and forth from her shoulder to that spot she loved beneath the ear. Zit, zilch, nada. She didn't even shiver; I might as well have been trying to distract a marble statue...

_What the heck? Am I out of practice or something?_ After all we'd done, and sleeping next to her in a nightgown that smelled like her, there was just no way my scent still turned her off. I was pretty much trampling her buttons; Ivy should have been all over me by now...

"It reminded me of you." Ivy said, her fingers brushing lightly against the reptile-shaped bracelet resting against her collarbone. "It's got your eyes."

"Oh, yeah? Well, I think it's got your teeth." I replied more bitingly than I intended, both peeved I couldn't get a rise out of my lover and a bit insulted at being compared to the snake on my wrist. Now that I took a closer look at it, I found it had a much more vicious air about it than I first realised. It wasn't swallowing its tail at all, just resting its head against it like it was lying in ambush, and its eyes... I wouldn't have trusted anything with those eyes. I doubt Ivy would have either, which could have worrisome implications if it reminded her of me. "Ivy, what's the matter?" I asked again, giving up on bodily distracting her from whatever dark thoughts were running through that pretty head of hers. "Did you get some bad news while I was asleep? You can talk to me, you know."

Ivy stayed silent at that, her eyes slowly closing and her face completely emptying of emotion. It didn't go with the pose at all. Her body language suggested vulnerability, sorrow, worry. Her face, on the other hand, was set in a coldly distant calculating expression.

"I got a call I don't know what to make of yesterday. Truthfully I've been trying to wrap my head around it ever since I got it." She finally spoke, her head pivoting slowly so she could look at me. Her eyes struck me cold; she was looking at me the exact same way she had when she first rose and was faking her post-death stupor; detached, devious, viciously intelligent, but this time, there was no accomplice wink, just that dreadfully cold void.

"A call?" I swallowed softly as hesitantly disentangled my body from around her. "Ivy, stop it." I pleaded, throwing my pride out the absentee window. "You're scaring me."

"Why would you say that, Dear Heart?" Ivy asked neutrally, the dispassionate way she said her moniker for me chilling the blood in my veins. "Do you have a reason to be afraid of me?"

"N-no." I stammered. "I mean, you're giving me a pretty good reason to be scared right now, but other than... Ivy, if you're trying to sweat me, you did it, just cut it out. Whatever I've done, I apologise, okay?" Normally, I would have been a lot more flamboyant about being given the cold shoulder or accused that way, but Ivy... Ivy would have scared the pants off of me if it wasn't for my current attire.

"You haven't done anything, I'm afraid that's exactly the problem. It's what you didn't mention that worries me, and it's going to take more than an apology if I turn out to be right." She stated enigmatically. "I'm curious to know what Trent wanted with you yesterday afternoon, or why you kept your little meeting a secret. Considering what almost transpired, I think I should have been informed..."

"What Trent- How did you know Trent came to see me?"

"Come now, Rachel. Who did you think Erica would call if she barged in on a meeting involving you and people threatening you, hmm?" Ivy asked expectantly. _The cell phone_, I realised, feeling like banging my head against a wall all of a sudden, _Ivy was on the phone with Erica when Quen caught her._ "The poor dear was so scared for you, she got sloppy and gave herself away when she called me. I hope for Quen's sake I never lay eyes on him again, because I'll be sure to snap his fingers off and shove them into his eye sockets if we do."

"Ivy, w-wait. Calm down. I can explain."

"You'd better. I was listening in. As a matter of fact, a few of Reed and Heidi's colleagues were seconds away from barging in and killing every elf in the church when Erica assured me everything was fine and I called them off. I clearly heard you say you agreed to help him." Ivy cut me off, her pupils smoothly swallowing up her irises. Her hunting aura rose about her, seemingly wrapping itself around my throat and choking me it was so intense. I couldn't look away from her eyes, couldn't think at all. The warmth of life left me in the space between one heartbeat and the next, leaving me trembling, numb and weak. "He put the three men I had watching the church in magically induced comas in order to talk to you without my knowledge, you know. The doctors aren't sure they'll ever wake up, so for your sake you'd better tell me what 'helping him' means." Ivy demanded, her voice deeper and colder than I ever heard it.

"He... He wanted me to help him stop you. F-from taking over." I couldn't help but answer. Far too much of my brainpower was dedicated to being scared out of my mind to even think of ways to present the truth otherwise.

"And you agreed?"

"N-no, I didn't-"

"Don't lie to me." Ivy warned me with deathly calm. "I heard you. The only reason I'm giving you a chance to explain is that you declared Erica was off limits. You agreed to help him. Tell me what he's planning."

"I didn't agree to work with him _against_ you." I amended, panicking when the smothering aura reached negative Kelvin. "I agreed to talk to you about letting him perform some treatments on pregnant elf women! That's all! Ever since you seized his labs, he's been falling behind on their treatments! I agreed to help _them_! He wanted more, but that's all I gave him! If he's planning something, I've got no clue what it is!" My words stumbled all over each other as I gushed out, clutching at my throat even though her fingers were only wrapped around it in my head.

"I don't believe you." The vampire said, the oppressive waves of cold emanating from her redoubling. "If you think sharing my bed somehow gives you a free pass to plot against me, I've got some news for you, little witch." That was it. She pushed me past my limit; the very concept of pride long since lost to me, I skittered off the bed like an insect startled by sudden light, falling flat on my ass on the carpeted floor. The pain going ignored, I crab-walked into a corner of the room, driven by pure fright or flight instinct (yeah, I was _that_ scared) and shaking like a leaf from head to toe.

"It's the truth! Smell it, or hear it, or whatever vamp mojo you always use! You could always tell when I was lying before, do it now!" I scrambled for a way to convince her of my innocence, still scared out of my mind even though Ivy hadn't made a move to close in on me. The vampire was still sitting in bed, in the same position, looking harmless at a glance though her mere presence chilled the air around us. For what felt like a very long time, Ivy stared at my cowering self, her expression impassive, her only movement the flaring of her nostrils and the slight rise of her chest as she breathed in what information my scent offered her. I felt like a bug pinned under a sadistic kid's magnifying glass while she analysed whether or not I could be trusted.

"You've altered your scent before." She finally stated simply, her aura retracting back into her body anyway, letting me stand upright and breathe easier, though I was still scared enough that I didn't want to move from the furthest spot in the room from her yet. "I don't know if I can trust it." Like a child listening to her parents fight in the next room, she hugged her shins more tightly, letting her forehead rest on her knees. She was clearly lost in thought, and God help me, I didn't want to know what conclusion she was going to draw.

"I think I want to go home now." I gathered enough of my wits and said in a quiet, wavering voice. Screw sunlight, screw great sex, screw cuddling and most importantly, screw my stupidly ignoring Jenks', Ceri's, Trent's and even Ivy's own warnings. I'd gotten close to a goddamn undead vampire, offered her my body, locked myself naked in a room with her, surrounded by who knows how many of her minions... there was no word for my stupidity. Jenks was right. Out of grief, I'd placed my head on the chopping block for a chance to hold on to a shadow of what Ivy and I could have had, and now Ivy was fiddling with the guillotine's trigger, debating whether to pull it or not.

_No, not Ivy. Ivy died a month ago. She's dead. She's gone, and she's never coming back._ All those dark, despairing emotions that had washed away in that first kiss we shared in the kitchen a week ago came flooding back, threatening to drown me once more, but before the realisation Ivy was truly gone could knock me flat on my ass, I slammed everything down, locked down my heart and threw away the key. I could cry my eyes out over losing her a second time once I was back on holy ground.

_I swear to God, if I can get back to the church I'm never leaving it again..._

"I understand." Ivy murmured without raising her head. "Unfortunately, you're not."

"Ivy, please. Don't be stupid." I pleaded with her, tentatively sending a part of my mind searching for a line, feeling a little more confident when I found we weren't too deep underground for my magic to work. I was still trapped in close-quarters with an undead vamp, so short of a chainsaw manifesting out of thin air, nothing would really reassure me, but at least I wasn't helpless. I had an edge her sheer physical aptitudes couldn't match; I could only pray I wouldn't have to find out if it was enough.

"I can't let you go, Rachel. Where you're involved, I don't tend to act rationally. You're one of the only weaknesses I have left. It's too dangerous to let Trent get his hands on you. You're too close to me to be allowed to work for him, in any way, shape or form."

"I'm not." I defended myself curtly, discreetly letting the energy trickle into my chi so as to not give my hand away. "Ivy, I _don't_ _want to fight you_." It was the truth. Even for me, turning around and blowing the face off a lover I'd just shared myself with was pallid. No matter what Ivy thought or how it turned out, my desires and my feelings had been honest when I stepped into bed with her.

"I don't either." Ivy responded, still not moving a muscle. She sounded so genuine I could've almost forgiven the aura... and the brutal interrogation... and the death threats. On second thought, that was one stupid impulse; we were light-years beyond gluing back together. "Please come back to bed. It's still early, and we have a long night ahead. Get some more sleep. I won't lay a finger on you, you have my word."

"No. I'm not going to come back to bed. I'm leaving. I'm not going to pick a side between you and Trent, so just let me go peacefully, and we can both go our separate ways, without killing each other."

"Please don't be too mad at me. You have to look at this my way. I'm getting a serious case of _déjà-vu_ here. It always starts like that, doesn't it? First he comes to you with a proposal that you refuse him, saying you'll never help him ever again." Ivy recounted reasonably. "Then he finds a chink in your armour. You start to waver, he starts to make sense somehow, and before you know it, he's gotten through to you and it ends very badly for the poor schmuck he needed help with. Tell me this isn't history repeating itself?"

"It's not! I swear to God it's not."

"I'm sorry if it's the truth, but I still can't take that chance, not anymore." She said with patient stubbornness. "If we were living in a vacuum and it was all up to me, maybe I could trust you, but by the time the sun rises tomorrow, I'll be the new master of Cincinnati. I have duties to others, too. Duties I don't intend to fail in. There's too much at stake to beat around the bush any longer."

"You... Your mom gave up?" _She won._ _Ivy's going to be master of Cincinnati. Yay? Boo? Little bit of both? Great for the city, but it sure sucks for me?_ I couldn't decide how I felt about that. It didn't make her immediately more threatening than she already was... right?

"Didn't you wonder why it took nearly half an hour to tuck my little sister in? My parents and I had a chat after I saw Erica to her room. It turns out they had their own talk while we were together in the library, and my father convinced my mother to come to me with a reasonable proposal. The terms aren't very important here. What matters is that tomorrow the life and prosperity of all this city's vampires will become my responsibility... and you are conspiring with one of their enemies. That makes you one of mine."

Okay, maybe that righteous leader act did make her more dangerous...

"I'm not! For God's sake, you incredibly stupid moron, how many times do I have to tell you?"

"Why did you spend the morning with me, then? Why did you try to seduce me, all of a sudden?"

"How about the obvious reason? Because I wanted to!" I yelled at her. "God, Ivy, is that so mind-boggling you can't wrap your head around it? I love... loved you, damnit!"

"You refused to see me all week, but mysteriously let go of all those doubts you had _today_? Mere hours after Trent met with you, wanting your help against me?" Ivy wrongfully analysed my supposed motives. "Even you can see how it looks. If you had just mentioned what happened instead of keeping it a secret, I would have believed you, but now? The evidence isn't in your favour."

"I didn't keep it..." I began to protest, before remembering I had indeed kept it a secret. I'd done it in hopes of preserving the semblance of peace that had come back to my home town, but why was I getting the feeling telling her that would not convince her? "You're paranoid." I scoffed and threw my arms up in consternation, turning my back to her with a confidence I sure didn't feel. "Worse than paranoid, you're day-tripping. It's clear I can't convince you I didn't plan this, so, sorry, but we're done talking now. Don't bother calling anymore." _Swell, I hope I don't have to fight out of here. I'm already driving out in her nightwear..._ I realised as I strode towards the door, thinking there was no chance Ivy would let me dress, but before I could even finish that nervously flippant thought, Ivy, still naked as the day she was born, materialised between the exit and me, slowly shaking her head with a look of pure regret in her eyes.

"I implore you, Dear Heart. Let go of the line, and come back to bed. I can give you another pheromone bath, even a massage if you want. You'll sleep like a baby. I promise no one will hurt you, not now, not later." She was blatantly trying to bribe me, but I only went colder at the mention of her pheromones, and I listened more attentively for the sound of the ventilation, finding only a vague reassurance when I faintly made it out. Could it keep up with her outpour of mind-altering chemicals? Damnit, I had to get out before she had me bespelled and I stopped wanting to get out altogether.

"Get out of my way, or I swear to God, I'll blast you right through the door." I grunted at her, stubbornly tapping the full extent of the line and bracing myself for the kickback of discharging energy I was about to be hit with. The vampire didn't even blink, to my never-ending dismay. "Last chance. You've got three seconds." I swallowed audibly, raised my right arm to her face, my fingernails cutting into the skin of my left palm and my eyes scrunching close as I mentally counted down. I didn't want to do this, let alone watch this, no matter how dire a turn our relationship had now taken. It was still the face of a woman I loved. I'd just been too stupid to let her go when she died, and now it was my turn to pay the price to keep my freewill and my life.

"No. That was your last chance." Ivy said from under her dark bangs... just as her gift came alive. "You can spare yourself some pain if you let go of the line right now." The silver snake encircling my wrist mysteriously began to constrict it so tightly it made me gasp in pain and clutch my wrist in a desperate attempt to get the crushing bracelet off. The damn thing wiggled over me for a few seconds, becoming in turn almost loose enough to be pulled off and so tight it cut off all blood flow to my hand, until it settled somewhere in between, uncomfortably tight, but not so much that it hurt.

Then the real pain started.

The snake reared its vicious little head back, coming alive before my bewildered eyes and hissing menacingly at me like a real one would, its silver fangs aglow with dark purple energy. It struck just like its flesh-and-blood kin would, sinking them blindingly fast into the tender flesh of my wrist. I screeched as the metal points broke the skin, but the flesh wound soon went ignored. The line energy I was channelling slipped from control, my mastery over it wrenched from my grasp by the construct quickly bonding to me.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!" I yelled frightfully at the vampire, trying pointlessly to wrench the silver teeth from my flesh.

"Let go and it will stop. Don't, and I can guarantee you won't like what happens next."

With a cry of effort, I attempted to lash out at her, using all of my willpower to tap more from the line, but all it did was accelerate whatever process the bracelet was going through. No matter how much I sucked out of the line I tapped, the snake just sucked it right back out of me. For several heartbeats nothing happened, other than the familiar, violating sensation of being drained of ley line power and the sharp pain of the little silver fangs sunk into me. The emerald eyes of the snake shone with an inner light that intensified by the second, its metal skin warming up as it pulled more and more from me, until it felt like I had a small star strapped to my wrist, dramatic shadows getting cast every which way from the pulsating glare. It trembled, like it was reaching breaking point, and I took heart in that, fighting through the revolting feeling in hopes I could overload the damn thing and get it off me somehow. I could channel and hold a lot of power; there was no way in hell some magical trinket could outdo me in raw magical strength and stamina, I was sure of it.

Turns out, I was half wrong. _At_ _least_ half wrong. Maybe the bracelet couldn't hold out as long as I could, but I never got a chance to find out. All the energy it stole from me had to go somewhere, hence why it looked more and more like the Energizer bunny's infinitely creepier cousin. A new pulsing joined in low in my belly as the amount of energy it held obviously reached a critical point, at first barely noticeable but quickly rising and intensifying, turning uncomfortable, then rapidly downright painful, all the way up to agonisingly unbearable, making me double over in pain as I realised just what was going on. The damn thing was giving me back what it took from me, with what sure felt like a buttload of interest; painful bursts of power surged out of it straight into my body, raw and wild, their jagged edges tearing my brain apart. It felt like getting hit with Angel's backlash in miniature version all over again, and repeatedly this time around, my chi and mind mercilessly assaulted into submission. Frantically, I listened to Ivy's advice and let go of the line before the damn thing left me with medium-well done synapses, but the waves of burning power didn't stop with my compliance. Apparently, once it got going, the snake construct had to discharge entirely, and I hurt from it all the way, like I was getting tasered a hundred times over. My legs gave out in the near-seizure, and I collapsed miserably to the floor, twitching and drooling, lost in torment that felt never ending. Damn it all to hell, how much juice had I been stupid enough to pump into that thing?

I have no clue how long I was left writhing on the floor, getting fried from the inside by my own magic harnessed against me, but eventually, the damn bracelet ran out of power to throw back at me, leaving me sagging in nigh-orgasmic cessation of pain, panting and squirming in my smouldering, too tight skin. My muscles were so sore I could barely move without their protest cutting off my breath. I felt like I'd been run over by an eighteen-wheeler, and my head was killing me, but as I painstakingly pushed myself on all four, I got the feeling there wasn't quite as much damage to my chi this time around as there had been after my confrontation with Angel; bully for me, I may not need a month of recovery this time around. Small favours. It's not like I could use magic anyway as long as the serpent bracelet was around my wrist. The trinket apparently didn't trust me anymore, as it didn't loosen its grip on me, even as its vicious little head settled itself back against its metal tail. There was a little blood left where the fangs had pierced my skin, but in the wake of the energy backlash I barely felt the little punctures the piece of jewelry had left. My God, what dark corner of hell had that thing crawled out of? How had Ivy gotten her hands on such a nasty magic item?

"I did warn you..." Ivy whispered very close by, her cool palm against my sweaty cheek snapping my thoughts back to the present crisis. In all the pain and misery of the past minutes, I'd forgotten the other mortal danger I was in. Startled, I fell backward, crawling away on all four until my back hit the wall. "I was hoping you wouldn't trigger it. To answer your question, it's an unfortunately necessary insurance policy that will make sure you don't use magic again before I trust you to. Think of it as a distinguished version of those spelled zip-strips you're so fond of. It will relax its grip too eventually. As long as you don't try to use magic, or to take it off, it will remain comfortable to wear." The naked vampire informed me casually, as if she hadn't stood there watching me get pounded into submission by her goddamn 'insurance'.

"Was all of this morning a pretext to get it on me?" I rasped accusingly, feeling as used as a blow-up doll. "Everything you said, everything we did? You knocked me out with sex and pheromones just so you could slap that thing on me without a fight?"

"That was one reason. Your magic was the only thing that could threaten me while I questioned you. I had to find some way to neutralise it, and I could hardly risk forcing it on you where someone might see us. They might get the idea our relationship is strained, and there's a lot of faith riding on both of us being together."

"And you accused me of seducing you..." I scoffed with dark, bitter irony. Seriously, how the HELL could I have been this stupid? "You're the one I never should have trusted. This was all an elaborate trap from the beginning, wasn't it? You got me right where you wanted."

"Not remotely." Ivy replied, her voice still as smooth and mild as warm caramel, even in the face of my accusations. "If anything, it was a test, not a trap. I didn't want this. I would have been so happy to simply sleep alone today. If you hadn't offered yourself to me, if you had proven to me beyond a doubt you were still letting our relationship evolve naturally rather than using it to further Trent's agenda, I would have gladly put this incident in the church behind us. Instead, you gave me just enough blood to whet my appetites for you and took those risks to get close to me. You have to admit you shouldn't have gone along with a lot of what I did to you this morning."

"Because I wanted to show some trust. Some damn acceptance. I was a damn fool and I wanted to be with you again, so I let you do what you wanted, because _I_ wanted to trust you not to go too far!" I spat bitingly, my voice rising and rising. I knew I was cornered, and all I had left was a sharp tongue to put up a defence. Ivy would make a mockery of me if I went hand-to-hand against her, and attempting to use magic would again harm me more than her. I was trapped like a rat.

"So you say. Maybe that's the truth. I'm terribly sorry we came to this extreme if it is, but I promise you it won't matter anymore after tonight, one way or the other." Ivy replied enigmatically. Slow and confident, she stalked towards, making me flinch away from her even though I had nowhere left to run. "Look at me." She demanded gently once she was kneeling before me, her voice taking on a mysteriously vampy quality hypnotically reverberating soothingly through my abused brain, bypassing it entirely to force my eyes to meet hers. "Breathe. Slow and deep. Breathe. Relax. There won't be any more pain if you just relax."

My heart hurt so much that promise almost made those deep breaths she wanted me to take sound like a good idea, but I had enough self-preservation left not to want to. I knew what she was doing, but I could only hold my breath for so long before I passed out, and I eventually drew a shallow, shuddering breath. The rush of pheromones in my lungs almost instantly weakened my resolve and the air whooshed out much slower and steadier than my panicked state should have allowed. I couldn't hold out any longer, and soon my breathing was synched with hers, slow and deep, just like she wanted, taking in the pheromones she was putting out to sap my will completely, slaving it to hers.

"I was such a fool..." I whispered. A single tear made it down my cheek before her pheromones took root in my brain, altering my thoughts to whatever shape the vampire wanted them to be. An unnatural numbness spread through me, as if I was watching someone else's life unfold and unravel all of a sudden. Ivy righted herself and offered a hand to help me up, my own hand meeting hers without any conscious control on my part. I was a prisoner of my own body, enthralled to the vampire's will, yet I also remained cruelly aware of the control I no longer had. I watched myself walk to the edge of the bed though I desperately didn't want to. I watched my hands throw the covers back and my body slip beneath them, though entering the gates of hell would have frightened me less. I watched Ivy pull them around me and distantly felt her climb next to me, over them.

"Will you let me hold you?" She asked softly.

"Why do you even bother to ask?" I sniffled, trying my hardest to keep from crying. "It's only a courtesy anyway when you can just make me want it."

"Rachel, only your body is outside your control right now. Your mind is your own. I wouldn't take that away from you." The vampire defended herself, her tone not fluctuating one bit. "Please, let me comfort you."

"Get my hair out of my face?" I swallowed and asked, her compulsion not even letting me deal with the annoyance of my red curls irritating my nose myself. The vampire complied immediately, her fingers taking the time to lightly caress my jaw and ear as she pulled the fiery strands away. Giving my lack of protest the value of worded consent, she almost timidly slipped under the covers and encircled my waist with her arm. I didn't tell her to get off me any more than I told her to embrace me, feeling I was at least preserving a fraction of my pride this way. There was one very simple reason why I wanted her there; if I closed my eyes and used my imagination, I could almost pretend the creature at my back really was my Ivy, not just a broken shell of her, and find some semblance of solace in it, if only for a moment.

"What's going to happen tonight?" I asked even though I couldn't look at her, dreading the answer so much but inquiring anyway in hopes the small mental effort required could stave off the darkness encroaching on my mind. Ivy was willing me to sleep, and she was winning, big time.

"Tonight, I'll be officially recognised as the master of Cincinnati. And you'll be by my side, as my prospective Scion when I receive the families' allegiances." Ivy declared almost mournfully. "It's going to be the first night of the rest of our lives, Dear Heart. Tonight, the last scores are settled, the last debts repaid. Tomorrow at this hour, we'll have a blank slate and a whole city to make whatever dreams we want come true."

"You're planning to bind me, aren't you?" I asked, deducing I wouldn't stay her _prospective_ Scion for long in that grand vision of hers.

"I didn't want it to be a punishment, Rachel." Ivy murmured wearily. "I was planning on making it a beautiful gift. I wanted to give you a few years to warm up to the idea before even proposing to you. _Proposing_, not forcing you. But thanks to Trent, I can't afford to wait or to let you choose. I have to make sure you don't harm anyone under my responsibility. Binding you is the only way to make sure of that now. I won't turn you into a puppet, my love." She added and gave me a comforting squeeze when I started crying quiet, frightened tears. I couldn't help it. A feeling of crushing helplessness was weighing down on my chest, a blind panic rampaging through my mind though my body was only dead weigh I couldn't will to move, to fight, to flee or just... act! Ivy had set loose one of my worst nightmares; she turned me into that dying child again, the one who dreaded going to sleep because she knew that if she closed her eyes, they might never open again. Protectively, Ivy curled her body more tightly around mine in a gesture that could have been sweet if it hadn't been preceded with torture and interrogation. "I still loathe Piscary and what he did to me. I won't force you to exist in a state of constant mental violation like he did. Your binding to me will be nothing at all like that. You've seen Angel, haven't you? She's a strong and wilful companion who speaks her mind, who has a life and a will of her own. I want you to be like her, even freer. You and I will be beautifully intertwined, but I want you to remain your own person. I want you, such as you are, with all your strengths and all your infuriating quirks. It will be loose and gentle, I promise. I just need to make sure beyond a doubt you're not trying to take me down. Do you understand?"

"Ivy, I don't want this! I'm begging you, let me go!" I sobbed, using the last of my rapidly decreasing strength to force the words out. "I won't ever do anything to cross you again, I swear! I'll shut down Vampiric Charms! I'll leave the city behind and never come back, but please, please don't do this to me!" I promised frantically, more than ready to follow it through if it meant I could escape my approaching doom. That Ivy compared her plans for me to what Nathalie had done to her seemingly free-spirited Scion gave me no comfort whatsoever. My free will couldn't merely be a gift from her, a reprieve she granted me from slavery. I would die first.

"Dear Heart, is the thought of living by the side of someone who loves you forever truly that terrifying to you?" Ivy asked, having the gall to sound hurt about my plea, even after she tortured me into submission and temporarily enslaved my will to hers. "I don't want to consume you or degrade you. I want to give you more power and status than you ever had; strength, grace, influence, beauty, safety, all the material comforts you could want, even immortality that you won't have to stain your soul to pay for... This is hardly a living hell I'm offering you. It's... the closest I can do to asking for your hand in marriage, actually. I want to make this happily ever after, for both of us. Please don't be afraid."

"Don't... want it. Not like this." I breathed out barely audibly. I didn't have the strength to protest further. I couldn't keep my eyelids open any longer, but in the few seconds before my consciousness evaporated into oblivion, I made out Ivy's last words, the coddling in her voice clearly gone despite the illusory distance.

"I'm afraid there is no other choice, my love. When the sun comes up tomorrow, you will either be mine... or you will die. I can't let you go any other way. I'm sorry."

You know what? I'm totally blaming it on falling asleep that I didn't tell her I preferred that last choice. I was not balking in the face of death at all. The tsunami of terror that overcame me in that last second of consciousness was just a coincidence. Yeah...

A/N: *blank* *the author ran away again*


End file.
